Mist rolled in with the silence of forgotten prayers.
The Emberfall Woods, once called Goldenreach, stretched before the Hollowborn like a slumbering beast—branches bowed, bark scorched, the leaves rust-colored not by autumn but by curse.
Lyra walked with her sword sheathed but her senses unsheathed.
Every snapped twig felt like a heartbeat out of time.
They had left the Twilight Gate hours ago.
The path now was overgrown, treacherous with spellrot.
The roots pulsed faintly underfoot—half-alive, half-lost.
Each tree felt like it watched.
"Don't trust the quiet," she murmured to no one and everyone.
"It's the kind that listens back."
Aira stepped ahead, Rin trailed behind, and Kaien flanked the left.
They didn't speak.
They didn't need to.
The Hollow had taught them that silence could carry more than sound—it could carry warning.
And ahead, the mist began to move.
2nd Person – You are Aira
You feel it before you see it.
A prickling on the nape of your neck.
The kind of stillness that comes not from peace, but presence.
You draw your dagger not in fear, but in trust—of instinct, of history, of the memory stitched into the steel.
The mist parts like breath around the blade.
Then the voice reaches you.
A whisper. Not spoken aloud, but traced through your bones like frost through glass.
"Aira… daughter of silence… the flame forgets you..."
You don't answer.
You strike.
You spin, blade leading, slicing through mist that becomes flesh at the last instant.
A figure cloaked in ash—its mask carved from bone—shudders as your dagger bites deep into its ribs. It lets out a soundless cry, melting into fog.
Another comes.
No footsteps.
No breath.
Only a blade swinging from shadow.
You duck—low—slash upward.
Your dagger tears through fabric and skin. You twist. Elbow to the jaw. Your heel plants and kicks back—another figure crumples into wet leaves.
Behind you, Lyra's voice lifts in a cry: "Form up!"
The mist thickens, and shapes pour from it like spilled secrets.
They have come for the Hollow's fire.
1st Person – Kaien
I saw them too late.
By the time I turned, the mist had bloomed with shadows, and the first strike came toward Rin.
My body moved before thought.
I slammed my shoulder into the wraith's midsection, knocking it from the glyph‑scribe's side.
Steel rang out.
My blade sang its spiral arc, catching one mask across the chin.
The bone split. The figure did not bleed—but it fell.
Another took its place.
I gritted my teeth and ducked low, spinning into a wide sweep that struck at the knees.
The figure screamed—a soundless wail—and folded into nothing.
But for each one we cut down, another rose.
Shadows reborn from ash.
My lungs burned. My thoughts narrowed.
Then I saw it.
In the clearing beyond the mist—half-concealed beneath a tree whose trunk glowed with emberlight—a cairn of black stones.
Old.
Marked.
A ward anchor.
"They're tied to that tree!" I shouted.
"Rin—burn it!"
My hand trembled, not with fear, but with knowing.
The cairn… I'd read of it once. A tether of mourning, bound by undeath to the soil.
Such stones weren't just cursed—they were the curse.
Anchors to forgotten vengeance.
I ran.
Mist clawed at my robes.
Voices whispered names I'd buried deep—my sister's laugh, my master's final breath.
I ran harder.
The glyph came mid-motion. I drew it with both hands, faster than I ever had.
Spiral. Cross. Flame. Spiral again.
"Ignis… Reminiscor."
Fire bloomed from the runes.
Not the cruel kind—but memory's fire.
Golden. Gentle. Unyielding.
The cairn caught instantly. Stones cracked open with a hiss, spewing shadow into the night sky.
The figures around us jerked—then froze—then crumbled.
One by one, the wraiths unraveled like thread from a rotting tapestry.
Silence returned.
But it felt hollow.
Aira stood in the smoke and silence, blade lowered, shoulders still tense.
Around her, the forest breathed again—but shallowly.
The trees did not mourn the dead. They had seen too many pass.
She glanced to Kaien, blood on his cheek and his blade sheathed again.
Lyra leaned against a blackened branch, knuckles white.
Rin stood still, eyes on the emberlit tree, lips moving in a wordless prayer.
Light curled from his fingertips like incense.
Aira stepped beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"They were trapped here," she whispered.
"Yes," Rin said. "And still hungry."
1st Person – Kaien (Closing)
We did not linger.
The Hollow does not mourn the dead by standing still. We remember by walking on.
But as we passed beneath the broken canopy of Emberfall, I let my fingers brush a branch still warm with ward‑light. For a moment, I felt a hum—not threat, not power… but recognition.
As if the woods remembered our names, and counted them safe for now.
The others walked ahead. I lingered.
And there, in the space between steps, I heard the whisper again.
Not enemy. Not ghost.
Something deeper.
"Flamekeeper… it wakes."
I straightened.
Far beyond, past ash and whisper, a pulse stirred beneath the earth. Not death. Not shadow.
But something older. And rising.