The eastern sky didn't burn.
It bled.
On the second night after leaving Valheren, the light began to change. Not the warm flicker of torches or even the wild chaos of true fire. It was cold. White-gold. It pulsed like a wound beneath the clouds.
The Hollow Flame was waking.
Eren stood on a ridge with Syra and Elira at his sides. Below them, the ground stretched in ripples of dead grass and cracked earth. Forests had withered without burning. Stones were scorched but cold to the touch.
And the wind carried no sound.
Even birds avoided the sky.
Syra muttered under her breath.
"This feels wrong. Not dangerous. Empty."
Elira knelt and touched the soil.
"It's not death. It's erasure. Something passed through here that unmade."
Behind them, the Ashbound scouts moved carefully, marking runes into the ground as they advanced.
Varn followed in silence, face pale.
"This isn't a battlefield. It's a message."
Eren kept his eyes on the horizon.
"What does it say?"
"That nothing we are deserves to remain."
They set camp on the edge of the still-field, placing no fire at its center. Instead, they laid stones and whispered names not to ward spirits, but to remind the ground that people still lived.
That night, no one slept well.
Dreams twisted. Some woke screaming, claiming they heard voices telling them to forget who they were. Others simply stared into the dark, silent tears carving paths down soot-stained cheeks.
Eren stayed awake with Akreth resting beside him.
The blade hummed low, a steady presence in the cold. Its light never flared, but it remained unchanging. Even in the presence of the Hollow Flame's influence, Akreth held.
By dawn, a scout returned from the northeast.
He was panting, limping, half-covered in pale ash.
"They've formed a ring," he gasped. "At the base of the Black Scar. Dozens of them."
Elira stepped forward.
"Circle? Covenant?"
The scout shook his head.
"No. Something else. They wear no marks. Their eyes glow."
Eren tensed.
"Yureth?"
The scout nodded slowly.
"She's there. I didn't see her face. But I felt her. Like something watching from beneath the world."
Syra turned to Eren.
"We can't wait."
"No," he said. "We go now. Before her flame spreads farther."
They marched within the hour.
Ashbound guides led them through forgotten trails, winding between broken stones and half-swallowed roads. Every step closer to the Black Scar was colder. Not in temperature. In presence.
Even memory struggled here.
Syra forgot which hand she held her dagger in.
Elira's spells reversed themselves twice.
At one point, Eren looked down and didn't recognize his own footprints.
Finally, they reached the rim of the Scar.
It was not a canyon.
It was a tear.
A jagged wound in the land, hundreds of feet deep, surrounded by twisted trees and blackened monoliths. At its center, a pyre burned but without fuel. It hovered in the air, crackling in reverse, pulling in light rather than giving it.
And beside it stood a figure.
She wore robes of faded crimson.
Her face was veiled in shadows.
But her presence was unmistakable.
Yureth.
Elira inhaled sharply.
"She hasn't aged."
"She doesn't exist the way we do anymore," Syra whispered.
Eren stepped forward.
The flame above the Scar pulsed.
And Yureth turned.
Her voice was hollow, yet somehow familiar.
"You are the echo that won't go silent."
Eren unsheathed Akreth.
"I am the flame that remembers."
Yureth raised one hand.
The Hollow Flame surged behind her.
"You carry a truth too stubborn to die."
"And you," Eren said, "carry a wound too proud to heal."
She smiled softly. Sadly.
"I tried to save us all."
"By unmaking everything?"
"By silencing the fire before it burns again."
Eren stepped closer.
Behind him, the others stood ready.
Ashbound, Reclaimers, wanderers. The broken and the brave.
All of them watching.
Eren raised his voice.
"You failed once."
He lowered Akreth, letting its point hover above the earth.
"You'll fail again."
Yureth didn't flinch.
"You bring light into a world that chose shadow."
"Then I'll remind them they can choose again."
The Hollow Flame flared in answer.
But so did Akreth.
Silver light cut through the ash.
And the first true sound in days echoed across the Scar.
A heartbeat.