Chapter 37 – The Silent Vale
The air turned bitter the moment Jean and her group stepped beyond the crypt's final stair.
A sweeping valley stretched before them, shrouded in perpetual twilight. Black grass rustled though there was no wind. Stone pillars—broken and half-sunken—lined a path that led toward a ruined fortress in the distance. At the center of it all: a battlefield frozen in time.
The Silent Vale.
Whitney's fur bristled. "This place remembers… too well."
Jean nodded grimly. She could feel it too—the hum of old battles, of blood spilled for a cause no one now remembered.
"Martin Luther made his last stand here," Silvia whispered. "Not against dragons—but against his own kin. This is where he sealed the Veillands and vanished."
Cassien looked around, hand on his sword. "Then where are the bodies?"
The answer came in the form of a sound—barely audible at first.
A slow, wet dragging.
And then a whisper: "Luther…"
Figures emerged from the mists.
Not undead. Not quite spirits. These were Echoes—fragments of those who fell in that final war. Knights, mages, dragons, even emissaries—shadows of their former selves, endlessly reliving their last breath.
Dozens of them.
One stepped forward—a towering knight in shattered Luther armor. Half his face was missing, revealing a skull etched with ancient runes.
Jean raised her sword. "We don't want to fight."
The Echo roared.
And the battle began.
Kael unleashed fire from his gauntlets, burning through the first wave. Silvia danced like a crimson storm, cleaving through echoes with elegant ferocity. Whitney tore through them like a comet of silver and fang.
But they just kept coming.
Jean fought at the center, Radiant Fang glowing with a light that pierced the unnatural dark. Her aura flared, and each swing sent an Echo crumbling to dust—but for each one fallen, two more rose.
"They're endless!" Cassien shouted, back-to-back with Kael.
"We're not supposed to defeat them!" Jean shouted back. "We're supposed to end them!"
She closed her eyes.
Reached for the light within—not Celeste's voice, but her own strength.
And then, she sang.
A single note. A lullaby her mother used to hum beneath moonlight.
The battlefield stilled.
One by one, the Echoes faltered. The knight who had first charged them dropped his blade. Mist bled from his armor. He sank to his knees.
Jean walked forward.
"I remember you," she whispered. "You were warriors. Heroes. You died for a dream… let me carry it now."
The knight looked up. A single tear slid down his ruined cheek.
And the Echoes began to fade.
Not into mist—but into light.
Their weapons dropped. Their bodies shimmered, then scattered like ashes on the wind. The vale grew silent once more—this time not with grief, but peace.
A stone door at the far end of the valley creaked open.
Beyond it: the Tomb of Martin Luther.
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