They broke camp before sunrise.
No one said much. The events of the amphitheater—Kael's flare of power, the rising pedestal, the white flame—had left them silent. Not wounded. Just... unsteady. As if they were no longer walking through the world, but through something the world had forgotten to bury.
Ash still drifted from the trees. But now, Irin noticed something else in the air.
A tension. A rhythm. Like the world had started counting seconds toward something it refused to name.
They moved north, where the hills curved around a black canyon that hadn't been on any of Lera's maps. The stones there shimmered faintly under sunlight, as if covered in something long cooled but never gone.
By noon, Kael started to fall behind. His steps dragged, his hands trembling now and then. The mark on his wrist glowed even when he tried to hide it beneath cloth.
Irin stopped and crouched beside him. "You need rest."
Kael shook his head. "I'm fine."
"You're not."
"I said I'm fine," Kael snapped, a flicker of heat sparking behind his eyes.
Lera stepped between them. "Stop it. Both of you."
Kael looked away, fists clenched. But he didn't argue further.
They rested beneath a split boulder near the edge of the canyon. Lera shared dried roots and salted meat. Irin chewed without tasting. The Hollow Flame had gone quiet—but not absent. It sat inside him now like coal beneath skin, smoldering without smoke.
Then they heard it.
Footsteps.
Not many. Just one.
But heavy. Purposeful.
Irin stood slowly.
From the bend in the canyon trail, a figure approached. Hooded. Wrapped in dark cloth. A long staff in one hand, a satchel in the other. No glow. No visible weapons.
Just silence that moved.
The figure stopped a dozen paces away and raised one hand, palm outward.
"I mean no harm," the voice said—rough, dry, but calm. "Not unless you bring it."
Irin didn't move. "Who are you?"
"Someone who remembers things others forgot."
"That's not a name."
The figure chuckled. "Neither is Ashborn. But you wear it well."
Lera's grip tightened on her blade.
Kael stood behind her, wide-eyed.
The stranger lowered their hood.
Beneath it was a face lined by wind and age. Genderless. Ageless. Their eyes were white—not blind, but bleached by something old.
"I watched the sky burn over the western ridge two nights ago," they said. "Flame with no fuel. Light with no sun. That was you."
Irin didn't deny it.
The stranger stepped closer, slowly. "You walk with a boy carrying flame too young. And a girl who knows how to survive but not how to run."
"Who are you?" Irin repeated.
The stranger knelt, placing the staff on the ground. "Once, I was called Listener. Now, I'm just a voice that hasn't faded yet."
"What do you want?"
"To warn you."
They sat by the canyon's edge.
The stranger brewed something dark in a tin kettle over a fire lit without flint. It smelled like burnt leaves and memory. None of them drank it, except the stranger.
"When the Ashborn fell," they began, "they did not all die. Some vanished. Some hid. But most were consumed by the very thing they tried to master."
Irin stared into the fire.
"I know that."
"You know the story. Not the silence between it."
The stranger's eyes turned toward Kael. "That boy—he's already touched it. Too deep. Too fast. He'll burn himself hollow if he doesn't stop reaching."
Kael said nothing.
"I didn't teach him to reach," Irin said.
"But he saw you burn, and thought that made it safe."
Lera looked between them. "Why are you telling us this?"
The stranger stirred the kettle. "Because something is waking. And once it wakes, it will look for a name to anchor itself to. Flame follows flame. And your boy... carries a beacon."
They continued walking together after the fire was gone.
The stranger didn't offer guidance. They just walked behind, silent, always watching. Kael avoided their gaze. Lera muttered to Irin once: "I don't trust them."
"You shouldn't," Irin answered. "But they haven't lied."
That night, they made camp by an old stone well — long dry, covered with moss and cracks. Lera stood watch. Kael slept close to the fire.
Irin sat with the stranger.
"You've seen others like me?" he asked.
"Yes."
"What happened to them?"
"Some shattered. Some ran. A few chose silence."
"And the ones who survived?"
The stranger looked up.
"They stopped being human."
Silence stretched between them.
Then the stranger reached into their satchel and pulled out a curved bone — small, charred, etched with a single rune.
"Do you know what this is?" they asked.
Irin shook his head.
"It's a fragment of the Chain. One of the last things Sirat Nol forged before the fall."
Irin's heart froze.
"You were there."
"I was."
The stranger didn't blink.
"I was a record-keeper. Nothing more. But I heard him speak. I saw the fire in his hands. He wasn't trying to rule. He was trying to hold the world together — and it broke him."
Irin took the bone gently.
The moment it touched his skin, a ripple passed through his body.
He saw:
A forge of ash; Sirat standing alone; Chains burning white against his arms; A voice screaming behind the veil — not his own; And then darkness.
Irin exhaled.
"It still remembers," the stranger said. "And now, so do you."
By dawn, the stranger was gone.
No footprints.
No scent.
Just the curved bone, left beside Irin's hand.
Lera said nothing about it. Kael barely looked up when Irin told him the stranger had left.
They resumed walking.
But something had changed.
Midway through the trail, Kael stopped.
His eyes unfocused.
His breath caught.
Irin rushed to him.
"What is it?"
Kael pointed to the horizon.
Smoke.
Dark.
Rising.
But not from a fire made for warmth.
It came from a village.
Lera looked through her scope.
"It's not mage banners," she said. "But there's movement."
Kael clenched his fists.
"I recognize it."
"What?"
"That place. My sister was there."
They moved quickly.
No more words.
The road twisted through dead thickets and old stone fences. As they neared the village, the scent of scorched wood hit them.
And something worse.
Ash mixed with iron.
They reached the outskirts just as the wind shifted.
The houses were partially standing, but blackened. Livestock pens broken. Trees split. And in the center square…
Bodies.
Some burned. Others untouched, but still.
Kael stopped at the edge and dropped to his knees.
"No..."
Lera stepped in slowly, checking for survivors. None responded.
Irin moved beside a wall, where someone had scrawled a message in blood:
"It wasn't the fire. It was what came after."
He traced the words slowly.
Lera stood beside him.
"They're close," she said.
"Too close," he replied.
She nodded.
"Time to move."
That night, they didn't make camp.
They moved under stars and falling ash, and no one spoke.
The world was changing around them.
And now it left warnings in the dirt.