The trees thinned. The scent of scorched moss and petrichor gave way to sharp salt in the air. Kael stood at the crest of a ridge, eyes scanning the horizon. There beyond broken hills and the wind-swept moors was the ghost of a city.
Or what remained of one.
Jagged stone towers pierced the horizon like the blackened bones of a leviathan. Smoke spiraled from some unseen fire within the walls. Once, this place had been called Darnavar, a cradle of ancient flamebearers before the Order turned it to rubble during the Great Purge. Now, it was more grave than sanctuary.
Behind him, the others climbed the ridge.
Sarya's hand brushed his arm lightly as she came to stand beside him. Her breath still carried the strain of the last few days of running, hiding, bleeding, and watching the Sleeper reawaken across the veil of fire and prophecy.
Liora, silent as ever, stared at the ruins. Her small fingers clutched Kael's worn cloak, and her eyes glowed faintly again, casting flickers of orange in the falling dusk.
"We're close," Tareth said, slinging his blade across his back. "But this isn't a place we should camp. Not if the Harbinger is still on our heels."
"He's not just following us," Sarya said, low. "He's herding us."
Kael nodded grimly. "Toward Darnavar. Toward whatever piece of the past lies buried there."
They descended carefully. The wind here was unrelenting, like the land itself had forgotten how to whisper. Only Liora seemed unbothered, walking slightly ahead, eyes distant. Nyra kept glancing at her sideways but said nothing.
They reached the city's edge by nightfall. The walls, once carved with ancient flame-sigils, were now half-collapsed and covered in ash-stained ivy. Through a shattered gate, they entered the husk of Darnavar.
Burned banners flapped limply in the wind.
Kael stepped lightly, boots crunching over debris and bones. The ground beneath them radiated heat not fire, but memory. Something happened here. Something that left the stone scarred and the air thick with silence.
"This place…" Nyra muttered. "It was one of the last strongholds of the Flameborne Rebellion. Before they were turned into crucible stock."
"Is it safe?" Tareth asked.
"No," Kael replied. "But it's where we need to be."
They made camp within the broken shell of a chapel, the stained glass shattered, its god forgotten. Sarya lit protective wards around the entrance with her blood. Tareth and Nyra took watch shifts.
Kael sat with Liora, wrapping a cloak around her frail frame as she huddled close to a flickering ember. She hadn't spoken since the escape from the Harbinger.
"You feel it, don't you?" he asked gently.
Liora blinked up at him. "It's under us. The memory."
A chill raced through him. "You know where?"
She pointed to the cracked altar, long desecrated.
Kael rose and walked toward it. His palm pressed to the stone and a pulse surged through him, heat and weight and light tangled in ancient pain.
Flash.
Chains. Screams. A woman burning. A promise broken.
Flash.
He stood over the Sleeper as she wept fire, and he spoke the words that damned her.
He staggered back, breath ragged.
Sarya rushed to his side. "Kael what did you see?"
"Something I did," he said, barely audible. "Something I can't take back."
They pried open the floor beneath the altar, revealing a hidden stair, sealed with glyphs that pulsed in Liora's presence. When she touched them, they crumbled to dust.
They descended.
Beneath the chapel was a crypt a vault, really where the Order once stored memory fragments torn from rebels. The air here shimmered with flame residue and echoing voices. At the heart of the chamber sat a pedestal of obsidian glass, and atop it, a sliver of crystallized flame.
Kael stepped forward.
As he touched it, the world vanished.
Memory
He stood atop the walls of Darnavar his armor bloodstained, his eyes hollow.
The Sleeper knelt before him, not a goddess, but a woman—wounded, chained, her fire extinguished.
"I trusted you," she whispered.
Kael didn't answer. Behind him, Inquisitors chanted. A crucible glowed, hungry for her soul.
He approached her, kneeling beside her broken form.
"I wanted to save you," he whispered. "But I was too afraid. So I chose them."
Her eyes, ancient and endless, burned through him.
And still, she didn't curse him.
That was the worst part.
He came to with a cry, hands trembling.
Sarya knelt beside him again, eyes wide. "What did you see?"
"I betrayed her," he said. "Not just with chains. With hope. I gave her love and then handed her over to be destroyed."
He looked at Liora. "She was carrying my child."
Silence fell.
Liora looked away.
"I think…" Nyra began cautiously, "she still is. Or at least part of her soul is bound in Liora. That's why the Harbinger hunts her. Why the Sleeper hasn't struck her down."
Sarya whispered, "Liora is the tether."
Kael rose slowly, fire kindling behind his eyes. "Then we protect her. No matter what."
They emerged from the vault with dawn rising. The wind had calmed. Darnavar, for all its ruin, felt less heavy now—as though a long-forgotten soul had finally exhaled.
Kael stood in the courtyard, the others around him.
He turned to face them.
"I don't know what I'll become," he said. "But I remember who I was. And I won't let that man decide who I protect now."
Sarya reached for his hand.
Nyra smirked. "Damn straight."
Tareth simply nodded. "Then we head north?"
Kael looked past the walls, toward the snowy peaks in the far distance.
"No," he said. "We go east. There's a place an old forge. The Order used it to burn away identities. It may hold the last fragments of who I was. And what the Sleeper truly became."
Liora tugged on his cloak.
"She's already waiting for you," she said softly. "And not all of her is angry."
Kael stared into the wind.
"I hope not," he said. "Because the next time we meet… I might not survive it."