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CHAPTER 5 — Ashes Don't Whisper, But He Heard Them Anyway
The air in Nihilshade tasted like iron and memory.
Dust clung to broken signs. Hollow-eyed buildings leaned into one another like war veterans trying not to fall. Somewhere far off, something howled—a sound stretched too thin, like it had forgotten what voice was.
The Forgotten One walked in silence.
He wasn't sure how long it had been since the "God" vanished—if that's what it even was. Time here didn't tick; it drifted.
"Reborn. Everborn," he murmured, testing the names like coins in his mouth.
"Two kinds of dead. Like being dead wasn't enough."
He passed a child drawing patterns into ash with a finger that flickered like candlelight. A ghost? No. Not quite. Something else. He didn't ask.
From fractured statues and burnt scrolls, he pieced together fragments of this world:
Soul-Ink—used to brand contracts between the living and once-dead.
Ghostmetal—weaponry forged from the regrets of mass graves.
First Dusk—a boundary only Everborn could cross, where names vanished if spoken aloud.
And the rules. The ones no one said aloud, but everyone followed:
Rule One: Nothing truly dies in Nihilshade. Not even pain.
Rule Two: All power comes at the cost of memory.
Rule Three: Do not seek the gates of Mourndawn unless you wish to be rewritten.
He felt no fear.
Just... curiosity.
The city opened into a plaza shaped like an enormous eye. Its iris was a cracked fountain of black glass. Sitting on its edge was someone who didn't look like he belonged here either.
A boy, maybe seventeen, wrapped in layered robes of bone-cloth and pale red thread. His eyes were a dim blue—like frostbite, not sky.
"I thought they sent myths to die slower," the boy said.
The Forgotten One didn't answer. He stared.
"You're not Reborn," the boy added. "You're too… wrong."
"Neither are you."
The boy grinned, teeth sharp like someone used to biting back.
"Name's Cael. Last of the Veyln. Maybe."
"What's a Veyln?"
"Dead race. Dead language. Dead god. You know, the usual."
The Forgotten One stared a moment longer.
"And what are you doing here?"
Cael's grin cracked. Not faded—cracked, like it had been painted on a mask that finally split.
"Hunting ghosts that breathe."
That night—or whatever passed for night in a world with no sky—he sat on a roof that had no name.
What am I?
Not a god. Not alive. Not Reborn.
He'd touched something ancient. Death had responded. But it hadn't answered.
If death is a door, who built it?
Was this world the end of the chain?
If there's an afterlife, is there an after-afterlife?
Are ghosts real? Or just memories that forgot how to forget?
Is there judgment waiting for sins? Or is death just the absence of opinion?
He grinned faintly.
"This is going to be fun."
Back in the plaza, Cael sat with his legs swinging off the broken fountain.
"You really don't talk much, do you?" he asked.
The Forgotten One shrugged.
"Most people talk too much."
Cael laughed quietly. Then, after a pause, his voice dropped.
"Wanna know how my race died?"
The Forgotten One turned slightly, silent.
Cael's smile faded.
"They were slaughtered. Burned to ash. Every child. Every elder. Every word in our language."
He looked down at the ash between his feet.
"And I remember it all."