The stairs wound down forever.
Lira lost track of time.
There was no light — not even from her shard. No sound. No cold. Just absence.
And then, without warning, the descent ended.
They stepped into a hall that should not have existed.
It wasn't ancient.
It wasn't broken.
It was… blank.
Walls smooth as polished bone. Floor like liquid stillness. No doorways. No exit.
Aerun whispered, "Where are we?"
Lira didn't answer.
Because the moment she opened her mouth — she forgot what she was going to say.
The shard pulsed weakly.
Then stopped.
Lira clutched it, panicked.
No warmth. No light. Just silence.
Aerun staggered.
"My name…" he muttered. "What… was my name again?"
Lira turned toward him — and felt a chill she'd never known:
She didn't remember his name either.
They had entered the Chamber of Ashmourn.
Not a prison. Not a tomb.
But a concept.
A place where memory was not erased — only unwritten.
The longer you stayed, the more you forgot.
Not just who you were.
But what you were fighting for.
Lira stumbled to her knees.
Her pendant — gone.
Her mother's face — gone.
Kael's voice — gone.
Only a flicker of instinct remained:
Don't forget.
Don't forget.
Don't forget… what?
Then—
A hum.
Soft. Gentle.
A girl's voice. Singing.
Lira looked up.
Across the blank chamber stood a figure.
A child.
No more than ten.
Eyes hollow as frost. Skin like dying flame.
She wore a crown of ash.
She stepped forward.
Sang a lullaby in a language Lira didn't understand… but remembered.
"When the fire sleeps, and kings forget,
The shadow learns to breathe."
The girl reached out a hand.
And said:
"You're close."
Aerun gasped, dropping to all fours.
He was losing everything — faster now.
His eyes met Lira's, pleading.
"I… I can't hold on."
Lira gritted her teeth.
"Then I'll hold for both of us."
She drew her dagger.
Not to fight.
But to carve.
Using the tip, she scratched a glyph into her forearm.
The first glyph Kael had ever taught in the Codex:
"I remember."
Blood ran.
The glyph burned.
And for a split second — fire returned to her veins.
She lunged toward the child.
The room howled.
The child's body cracked like porcelain.
Beneath the skin — darkness.
No shadow.
Ashmourn.
It didn't roar.
It didn't strike.
It only spoke.
"You brought fire into the one place it cannot live."
"Why?"
Lira stared it down.
"Because even forgetting… is a kind of memory."
The dagger plunged into the child's chest.
Not to kill.
But to mark.
The glyph burned into Ashmourn's false heart.
And for a moment—
The chamber blinked.
Reality returned.
Light.
Color.
Breath.
Aerun fell back, coughing.
His name came back first.
Then his voice.
"You… you fought it."
Lira knelt beside him, panting.
"No. I marked it. So now it remembers being seen."
The walls of the chamber cracked.
Not collapsed — but acknowledged.
And from those cracks, something rose.
A pedestal.
Upon it: a scroll.
Wrapped in crimson silk.
Bound by nine glyphs Kael had never used.
Aerun approached first.
"What is it?"
Lira picked it up.
The shard in her chest pulsed once.
The scroll opened.
And the words inside burned into her mind:
"Ashmourn is not death."
"Ashmourn is the memory of death, left behind in the wake of mercy."
"And it is growing."
Below the writing, a map.
Not of land.
But of names.
People who once served the flame.
All of them — missing.
All of them — marked.
Aerun said, "This isn't a warning."
Lira nodded.
"It's a prophecy."
As the chamber faded behind them, Lira held the scroll tight.
The fire in her chest now beat with a different rhythm.
Not survival.
Not fear.
But resistance.
Because if Ashmourn had been waiting all this time—
Then so had she.