Chapter – Echoes in the Wind
The wind wound its way through the blackened trees like a memory refusing to die. Every branch it touched whispered forgotten names, and every leafless twig creaked like the bones of ghosts. Kael walked at a slow, deliberate pace, his long cloak brushing against the ash-covered ground, boots leaving faint impressions in soil that hadn't felt warmth in years.
Beside him, the child trudged forward with quiet determination. Ren was small, fragile in the way all children were, yet something in his steps refused pity. His worn shoes slipped on the stones, his breathing came in sharp little huffs, but he never asked to rest, never asked to be carried.
Earlier that day, Kael had offered.
"You'll wear yourself out," Kael said, his voice low like gravel wrapped in silk.
"I'm not a baby," Ren had snapped back, chin lifted, eyes flashing with a spark of pride Kael recognized all too well.
He didn't press the issue. He had heard those words before—from a girl with storm-colored eyes who had once walked beside him through burning fields, determined to be strong until the end. Her name was Aiva. His daughter. Dead for a thousand years, yet still walking beside him in moments like this.
The silence between Kael and Ren wasn't awkward. It was a silence shared by those who knew grief but had not yet spoken it aloud. It hung between them like mist, weightless but chilling. Kael carried grief in his marrow, etched into his soul by centuries of loss. Ren carried fresh wounds—losses too recent to scar.
The child broke the quiet with a question that seemed to rise from the trees themselves.
"I think the stars are watching us," Ren said, his voice small, yet steady. He gazed skyward where twilight gathered in deep bruises across the heavens. "My mom used to say the stars were our ancestors. Do you think that's true?"
Kael didn't answer immediately. He looked up too, tracing constellations he had memorized long before Ren was born—before a hundred generations had come and gone. He remembered the names people had given the stars, the stories they used to tell to make sense of life and death.
"I think," Kael finally said, his voice distant, "we look to the stars because we're afraid to look at the ground."
Ren blinked, puzzled. "Why?"
"Because the ground is where we bury the ones we love."
The boy fell silent. His fingers tightened around the hem of his shirt. A moment later, he asked, "Did you bury someone too?"
Kael nodded once. "Many. Too many."
They traveled in silence again until dusk melted into night. The air grew cooler, tinged with the earthy scent of wet bark and distant smoke. They reached a shallow stream that shimmered beneath the moonlight. Kael crouched to refill their flask, the cold biting at his fingers. Ren skipped a few pebbles across the water—poorly, but enthusiastically.
"Where are we going?" Ren asked, after his third stone sank with barely a splash.
Kael watched the ripples fade. "Nowhere. And everywhere."
Ren gave him a look. "That doesn't make sense."
Kael's lips lifted in something like a smile. "That's how the world works, Ren. You'll learn."
The boy looked down. "I don't want to learn that way."
Kael turned to him. In that moment, Ren looked like every child he had ever failed. His face was smudged with dirt, his hair tangled, but his eyes… his eyes still held something Kael thought long extinguished from the world. Wonder. Hope. Light.
And that light would fade, Kael knew. Because everything he touched withered in time.
Still, he wanted to protect it. Just a little longer.
They camped beneath a crumbling stone arch—a ruin from some forgotten kingdom Kael could not name, though he may have once walked its halls. He set the fire carefully, coaxing flame from the dry kindling. Ren curled up close, wrapped in Kael's cloak. Within minutes, he was asleep, breathing softly.
Kael didn't sleep. He hadn't in centuries. The curse allowed him rest, but not release. When he closed his eyes, the memories came—not dreams, but perfect, brutal recreations of moments he could never forget.
Liora's laughter as she danced in the rain.
Aiva's hands clapping in joy when she took her first step.
Liora's body in his arms, blood warm on his skin.
Aiva's final breath, soft as feathers, as she died with his name on her lips.
He sat with his sword across his knees, eyes fixed on the flames. The heat did not warm him.
Behind him, Ren stirred and murmured in his sleep.
"Papa..."
Kael's breath caught. The word pierced deeper than steel. It was the sound of a wound being torn open again, of a ghost slipping its fingers into a heart trying to stay closed.
He rose and walked away from the fire, staring up at the moon. It hung low in the sky, dull and colorless, like a silver coin placed over the eyes of the dead.
"I can't do this again," Kael whispered to no one.
But the curse didn't care.
It had never cared.
The wind stirred the ashes at his feet, and with it came whispers. Names. Faces. Liora. Aiva. Others he had not spoken of in hundreds of years.
He looked back at Ren, who lay curled beside the dying fire.
Another name, waiting to be mourned.
Another story destined to end in silence.
Kael turned his gaze to the sky once more. The stars shimmered, distant and cold.
He whispered to them, as he had done countless times:
"Please... let me forget."
But the stars only watched.
And the echoes in the wind answered back with the names he would never escape.
Ren.