The fires had burned out, but the smell lingered.
Charred flesh. Cracked blood. Soul-rot.
The battlefield was no longer a place of war — it had become a graveyard. Some of the bodies didn't even look human anymore.
Liora sat amidst the carnage, knees pressed to her chest, eyes unfocused.
The corrupted had fallen with her.
And her heart — the anchor of everything — now beat like it belonged to someone else.
She hadn't slept. Not really.
Every time her eyes closed, she felt Hale's spine snapping.
Renna's scream still pulsed behind her teeth.
Seris stood a few paces away, arms folded, leaning against the remains of a fallen Wretch. Her left arm had been mangled, but she hadn't let anyone bind it. She wore her pain like armor.
"They didn't die for nothing," Seris said eventually. "You wounded him."
"Not enough," Liora muttered, voice hollow. "Not even close."
Seris didn't push.
She understood. There was nothing to say that would make it right. Only survival.
And vengeance.
Later, they returned to the old vault hidden beneath the Singing Pines. It had once been a sanctuary for soul-bound druids, but now it housed survivors. Refugees from the bloodbath.
Dozens of them.
Broken. Angry. Afraid.
Liora passed them like a ghost.
Some averted their eyes. Some dropped to one knee. Some reached out to her like she was hope made flesh.
She didn't feel like hope.
She felt hollow.
But one voice pulled her out of the fog.
"You shouldn't have fused so many at once."
She turned.
A figure emerged from the shadows — cloaked in soft green, hair silver and eyes sharper than steel. Myriel, the last of the Echobinders.
"You trained with Alric," Liora said.
"I taught Alric."
Myriel walked past her, trailing a long wooden staff carved with runes only a few remembered. She stopped before the cracked soul-tether on Liora's arm — a remnant of the corrupted fusion that hadn't fully healed.
"You've bound too many spirits, too fast. If you don't purge some, you'll lose your core identity."
Liora said nothing.
Myriel narrowed her eyes.
"You're already hearing them, aren't you? The thoughts? The whispers?"
Liora flinched. The old woman always saw too much.
"What are they saying?"
"Depends on the night," Liora murmured. "Sometimes it's Hale. Sometimes it's… someone I don't know. A woman. She keeps saying my real name. But I don't recognize it."
Myriel inhaled sharply — but said nothing.
"Tell me."
"Not yet," Myriel said. "Not until the rite is complete."
Liora's eyes narrowed. "What rite?"
The old woman gestured toward the fire pit at the center of the vault.
"The Calling. It begins tonight. And if you survive it… you may finally remember what Alric died to protect."
That night, Liora was led down into the roots of the vault, beneath the stone and bone, where a circular chamber pulsed with a heartbeat older than time.
Veil-torches lit with green flame. Symbols circled the chamber — ancient, humming.
The spirits within her stirred restlessly.
Myriel handed her a dagger made from dragonbone and whispers.
"Bleed yourself. Let the soul-thread open. Let the truth come."
Liora didn't hesitate.
She carved a line across her palm, letting the blood fall onto the sigil.
And the world fractured.
Suddenly, she was not in her body.
She stood in a field of echoes — memories that bled like watercolors across the sky. A child's laughter. A man's cry. The final breath of a dying god.
In the center of it all: a mirror.
But not a reflection.
A version of her — younger, innocent, unscarred.
And behind that version, a woman.
Tall. Regal. Terrifying in her grace.
The same woman from the whispers.
"Liora," she said.
Liora's blood turned to ice.
"Who are you?" she asked.
The woman stepped forward, brushing fingers against her cheek.
"You know who I am. You've always known."
Liora gasped as memories slammed into her — images buried so deep they had become part of her marrow.
A kingdom.
A cradle made of fire.
A father screaming as white-robed men tore her mother apart.
"They said you were dead," Liora whispered.
The woman smiled sadly.
"They made you believe I never existed."
And then — her voice became many.
"But the White Circle couldn't erase me. Because I am you. The fire inside you… is ours."
Liora fell to her knees.
"What do I do with this? What does this mean?"
The woman knelt beside her.
"It means your power was never borrowed. It was inherited. You're not Alric's weapon. You are your mother's wrath."
Liora woke in a gasp, eyes blazing gold.
The chamber trembled. Spirits screamed. Myriel looked on, nodding grimly.
"You saw her."
"I did."
"Then it's begun."
The Calling.
The beginning of Liora's true self reawakening.
And Mavrek?
He would feel it coming.
He would know — the girl he left bleeding in the battlefield was no longer the same.
She had a name now.
She had a legacy.
And she had nothing left to lose.