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In a candlelit chamber long sealed by time, a girl with trembling hands reached for a blood-soaked blade.
"You should've killed him, Eryndor."
"And become like them?" he whispered, eyes wild with grief. "I'd rather be cast out than become a monster."
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The wind howled through the burnt teeth of Ashengar's ruined battlements. Beneath the moon's waning eye, a lone figure trudged across the fallen stone, his cloak tattered and stained with soot. He had no sigil, no rank, no brethren—only the silence that follows a name erased from the Holy Registers.
Eryndor Vale.
Once High Inquisitor-In-Training. Now nothing.
And Lysara's first companion in the flames.
He had buried the memory of her. Or thought he had.
Until the nightmares started again.
Until Dren Talovar's name began surfacing in the whispers of dying cities.
Until the boy Eryndor once let live became the monster Lysara now hunted.
He hadn't seen her in seven years. Not since that night.
The night they broke their oaths.
The night she chose mercy.
The night he chose it too—and paid with exile.
Ashengar's walls groaned under time's weight. Eryndor stepped through a split in the cathedral's foundation, boots sinking into ash and moss. The inquisitorial altar was gone. Ransacked. Desecrated.
Only a single brand remained scorched into the far wall—a sigil carved not by zealots, but by a blade dragged with purpose.
Dren's message.
Eryndor knelt before it, fingers grazing the grooves in the stone.
"We remember the ones who watched us burn."
A voice behind him snapped the silence.
"You shouldn't be here."
He froze.
She stood just beyond the arch—cloaked, scarred, regal as ever in her inquisitor's armor. Her white hair caught the moonlight like silver thread, her stance cold and measured. But her eyes—they betrayed the tremble he knew too well.
"Lysara."
"You're trespassing on hallowed ground."
He stood slowly. "You're still calling this hallowed? After what they did to us?"
A pause. Her jaw clenched.
"I should arrest you."
"You won't."
She stepped forward. "You don't know me anymore."
"I know you still dream of him."
The slap echoed like thunder between crumbled stone.
His head snapped to the side, cheek stinging, but his eyes never left hers.
"How dare you," she spat, voice shaking. "You think you know what I carry? I wake up every night choking on the blood of villages he's burned. You let him live too."
"I spared a child," he hissed, voice low. "You spared the man who became this monster."
Her breath hitched—more from truth than anger.
Eryndor stepped closer. "But I didn't come to accuse you, Lysara. I came because Dren's messages… they're not just for you."
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
He pulled a parchment from his belt—charred, brittle, marked with a dark red seal neither of them had seen since the Holy Inquisition splintered.
A serpent crowned in flame.
"Dren is gathering more than heretics now," Eryndor said. "He's summoning exiles. Inquisitors cast out for mercy. For disobedience. For weakness."
Lysara's heart thudded.
"You think he's building a court," she whispered.
"No," Eryndor replied. "He's building a religion."
For a long moment, neither spoke. The wind curled between them like a serpent, hissing truths neither dared name. Then, softer:
"Why now?" she asked. "Why come to me?"
He hesitated. His eyes, once sharp with judgment, softened.
"Because no matter how deep you bury it, Lysara… the part of you that loved him never died."
Her lips parted—but no answer came. Just silence. Painful, aching silence.
He turned to go.
"I'll be watching," he said. "And when the flames rise… I'll be there to decide if you're worth saving."
As he disappeared into the ash, Lysara stood alone before the sigil on the wall—one ghost haunting another. Her fingers trembled as she reached for it, tracing the edges of Dren's cruelty… and Eryndor's mercy.
She closed her eyes.
And for the first time in years, she whispered a prayer—not for the dead. But for those damned enough to remember.