The wind had changed.
Lucian stood at the mouth of the cave, staring into a sky bruised violet with approaching dusk. His hand still shimmered faintly with the glyph—the eye open now, watching without blinking. It had not pulsed since the merging. It didn't need to. He could feel it now like breath in his lungs.
Behind him, Corvina emerged from the shadows of the tunnel, her boots dusted in memory-ash. Alice followed, veil back in place.
No one spoke.
They walked.
The descent from the mountain bled into the burned hills where no trees stood straight. This was the Whisper-Timber, where a firestorm decades ago had turned an entire forest into a ruin of charred, brittle trunks. But the wood had not gone quiet. It whispered names.
"Did you hear that?" Alice asked, pausing by a warped tree.
Lucian nodded. "They remember what burned here."
"Whose names are they saying?"
"No one's," Corvina said. "Or everyone's. Doesn't matter. Keep walking."
