The Vale of Whispers held its breath.
Kael stood in the center of the ruined Hall of Accord, torchlight casting trembling shadows on ancient stone. The remains lay where they had fallen, skeletons embraced, cradled, curled. Warriors, children, scholars. A people wiped from memory. A history buried in silence.
Now, they would be forgotten no longer.
"We can't leave them like this," Seris said softly beside him. Her eyes were rimmed red, her fingers still tracing the names carved into the wall, names that had once meant everything.
"No," Kael said. "We give them what was stolen."
He moved slowly, reverently, gathering fallen armor, brittle cloaks, anything left to distinguish the remains. Together, he and Seris laid the bones in rows near the center of the hall, facing east, toward the rising sun.
It took hours. But neither spoke of stopping.
When the last remains were placed, Kael stepped back and looked over them. His chest ached like something had cracked open and not quite healed.
"They deserved more than this," Seris whispered. "More than shadows and dust."
Kael nodded. "But at least now… they are seen."
He drew his blade.
Not in anger, not in vengeance, but in honor.
He knelt before the first of the fallen. "I don't know your name," he said, voice quiet but steady. "But I know your courage. I know your silence held truth when the world demanded lies. I know you didn't run."
He rose and moved to the next. Seris followed, kneeling with him, offering a single white flower she'd found near the gate.
To each one, they spoke. A vow. A name remembered. A whispered prayer.
When they reached the child with the broken lute, Seris's hands shook. She knelt with a soft cry and placed her pendant, her family crest, beside the tiny ribs. "I don't know if we were kin," she said, her voice cracking. "But you were mine. And I won't let the world forget you."
Kael placed his hand on her shoulder, his grip strong, steady.
"I think they were all ours," he said. "Every last one."
Then, with trembling fingers, he struck flint to kindling. A fire caught, and soon the ceremonial flames rose.
Not to burn the bodies, but to illuminate them.
The light licked the stone columns, casting golden warmth on the bones, on the mural of the glyph-bearers, on the faces of Kael and Seris as they stood in silence.
Then Seris lifted her voice.
A song, low, ancient, barely remembered.
A mourning hymn of the Old Kingdom. Kael didn't know the words, but the sound gripped him, pulled something loose in his chest. Others had sung it, once, at coronations, at farewells, at the end of all things.
Kael joined her with a hum, his voice a broken echo.
Together, they filled the Hall of Accord not with grief, but with memory.
When the final note faded, Kael turned to the hidden chamber. "There's more we must carry."
They descended once more into the dark beneath the hall.
The stillwater bowl remained, glowing faintly. The murals—glyphs and kings and flames—watched in silence.
Kael approached a corner they hadn't searched before. Behind a fallen slab, he uncovered a narrow alcove. Inside, wrapped in faded cloth, was a sword.
Not just any blade, it was Kavaran-forged, the hilt inlaid with a sapphire crest matching the one on Seris's pendant. The glyphs etched into the steel pulsed faintly at Kael's touch.
Seris stepped forward. Her eyes widened. "That belonged to House Araven," she breathed. "To the royal line. It was said to be lost in the fall."
Kael handed it to her, slowly. "It's yours."
She took it like it weighed the world. "My mother told me stories of it. Said it would return when the time was right."
Kael touched her cheek gently. "Then it has."
They climbed back into the light, the heirloom between them, the fire still burning behind them. Kael lifted a stone and carved a final mark into the archway: a sun breaking through clouds.
"They'll find this one day," he said. "And know."
Seris stepped beside him. "They'll know we remembered."
They stood hand in hand as the last embers glowed. The Vale was quiet, but no longer empty. It hummed with presence, with purpose.
Kael looked at Seris.
"We buried them," he said. "But what they stood for… that lives in us now."
Her fingers closed tighter around his. "Then we don't run from it. We rise from it."
He pressed his forehead to hers. "Together."
The Vale of Whispers bore witness once more, not to silence, but to the beginning of something new.
Not the end.
Kael knelt by the bones of a soldier whose armor still bore the sigil of the Old Guard—his own lineage. The crest had been scorched, but the outline remained: a winged flame split by a sword. He reached out, fingers trembling, and laid a hand on the corroded helm.
"He was one of mine," Kael murmured. "Maybe even kin. He died with the fire still on his blade."
Seris moved to a smaller form curled beside a broken harp, the strings snapped but still faintly glinting. A child. Her throat closed. "This… was a singer," she whispered. "They weren't warriors. They came here to shelter… to remember. And still…"
She fell silent, tears tracing her cheeks.
Kael placed a flame-kissed branch into the burial pyre. Seris added one too, and then together, they struck flint against stone.
The fire flared with a sudden roar.
The Vale responded.
A shimmer of golden mist swept through the hall, curling like breath from the stones. From the flame, faint outlines emerged, figures of light and memory. Elders with proud eyes. Children laughing. A warrior saluting. A mother shielding her child. They were not ghosts, but echoes, watching.
Seris gasped. One of the figures turned, a woman with her face. Not exactly, but enough. Her aunt? Her blood?
Kael stepped forward. "You waited," he said hoarsely. "All this time… you waited for us."
He dropped to his knees.
"We see you. We remember."
Seris joined him, her voice cracking. "And we swear to you… this will not end in silence."
Together, they spoke, from the pain in their hearts.
"By flame and blood, by name and shadow, we will avenge you, we will carry your truth, we will rebuild what was broken you are not forgotten, you are not gone, you are us, and we are yours." They couldn't control the tears flowing down their cheeks, as they embrace in a deep emotional hug, weeping painfully for their lost folks.
And swore by their hearts to make them pay for the pain they've caused them.
The fire roared higher as if answering.
And in the heart of the Vale, grief was no longer still.
It breathed.