"A crow never sings for the living. Only for what dies in secret."
—Old Skyreach funeral rite
.....
The Vale twisted as they passed through it.
Thick mist clung to the broken trees and jagged rocks like old sorrow. The deeper Ash traveled into the gorge called Veilstone Pass, the more it felt like the land itself whispered of something long buried and watching.
"This place is wrong," Kael muttered, tightening the froststeel clasp of his cloak. "Even the wind doesn't move like it should."
Ash stepped carefully beside him, his hand brushing the hilt of his dagger. "This was once a Shard-wound."
"Shard-wound?" Selene's voice was low, cautious.
He nodded. "The Wyrm-Priest said some battles with the Nameless God left permanent damage—scars in the land. The Veilstone is one of them. They tried to bury it… but power this old doesn't stay dead."
Above them, the shattered cliffs loomed like black fangs, and old bones—massive ones—jutted out of the ground, fused with rock and obsidian glass. The air grew colder, but not with natural frost. This cold tasted of silence and long-forgotten screams.
Suddenly, the ground beneath them shifted.
Kael froze. "Don't step forward."
Ash stopped just short of a half-buried glyph—ancient, cracked, pulsing faintly with violet light.
"A seal," Selene breathed. "But... fractured."
Ash knelt beside it, running his fingers over the worn edge. Symbols burned faintly into the stone, not in any known tongue, but one that stirred memory in his blood. Words older than the kingdoms, older than the Crown.
"Selene, can you read this?"
"No," she said, but her eyes shimmered strangely. "But it knows me. This seal is tied to a Pathway."
Kael stepped back. "Which one?"
Selene's voice was barely above a whisper. "The Hollow."
Ash drew back as a sharp wind hissed through the pass, and in the distance, something stirred.
---
They didn't make camp that night.
Instead, they found refuge in a half-collapsed ruin nestled into the cliffs. Moss had overtaken the stone, and claw-marks scarred the walls like warnings left by some long-dead beast. Ash sat near a sliver of flame, watching Selene sleep with a brow furrowed in dreams. Kael stood at the archway, his blade unsheathed, ever the sentinel.
Ash's fingers brushed the shard embedded at his chest. It no longer glowed—not here. In this place, its light seemed smothered, like a candle beneath ocean water.
"I've seen this place before," Kael murmured.
Ash looked up.
"In dreams," Kael said. "Back in the Frost Courts. My father once sent a scout regiment through Veilstone Pass. Only one came back. They said the others didn't die... they were taken. Consumed. Forgotten."
Ash tensed. "Taken by what?"
Kael didn't answer.
---
By morning, the answer came.
The mist had thickened into something physical—like breathing through gauze. Selene rose with a sharp gasp, eyes wide with vision.
"They're here," she said.
Then the veil tore.
Figures stepped from the fog—dozens. Clad in blackened armor fused with bone. No eyes. No words. Just the shrill, broken sound of whispers from mouths that moved wrong.
Kael lunged, frost blooming beneath his boots, sword meeting the nearest wraith in a clash of cold and ash. The blade passed through shadow—but it screamed. A banshee's shriek that cracked stone and mind.
Selene raised her palm, glassfire coiling around her wrist like serpents. Her illusion split the pass in two—shadows unable to tell what was real and what was bait.
Ash felt his shard stir. It was weaker here. But still burning. Still watching.
You must remember, it whispered.
He called the Flame That Walks.
The fire wasn't bright—not here. But it peeled away the illusions the shadows wrapped themselves in. They recoiled, revealing grotesque, half-formed faces beneath. One reached for him—and he stabbed it through the chest. It didn't bleed. It shuddered and dissolved.
But more kept coming. Crawling over the ridge. Pouring from crevices in the rocks. Drawn to the seal. Drawn to Selene.
Kael was bleeding now. Three wounds. Still standing.
Selene faltered, visions overtaking her again. "Ash—!"
He didn't hesitate.
He ran to her. Grabbed her by the arm. Drew on the shard—not the flame, but something else. A deeper spark.
The seal beneath them cracked again.
And then the entire pass shuddered.
Not from above. From beneath.
The whispers stopped.
All the shadows turned in unison—to the far cliff wall.
A massive stone face began to open. Not a door. Not a tomb.
A mouth.
And from it came a voice layered in agony, in time, in madness.
"ASH… ESHKARION… RETURN WHAT WAS STOLEN."
Kael stared, stunned. "What the hell was that?"
Selene grabbed Ash's arm. Her eyes were pure black.
"That voice," she said, "belongs to the one who remembers the true shape of the Crown."