Sometimes, the world does not shatter with thunder. Sometimes, it changes with a breath.
The fires had died.
Smoke still lingered in the air, a whisper of memory winding between scorched rooftops and blackened stone. Ash walked through the half-ruined district of Lowend, his boots stirring dust that felt heavier than earth. The streets had begun to open again, but war lingered in every crack and silence.
Children peeked from doorways. Elders sat in small circles, saying nothing, only watching him pass.
Ash didn't speak either. He only moved—like a shadow that had once forgotten its name, now trying to remember what it was supposed to be.
He found the old bell tower by instinct.
The chapel it once belonged to had long since collapsed, but the narrow spiral stair still stood. Each step groaned under his weight, brittle with time. He climbed without thinking, until he reached the edge where stone met sky.
The wind welcomed him.
From here, he could see almost everything—Lowend sprawling like a broken tapestry, the richer tiers of Ravenmark rising beyond, gleaming faintly in the distant morning light.
But it wasn't beauty he saw.
It was distance.
And division.
And memory.
He sat down, letting his legs dangle over the edge, arms resting on his knees. A breath escaped his chest, slow and controlled.
There were no enemies here.
No blades to parry.
No commands to give.
Only silence.
And that, somehow, was harder.
Because in silence, the past had a voice.
Ash closed his eyes. Beneath the stillness, he could feel the pull again—that ancient weight humming in his blood, quiet but steady.
Not power.
Not magic.
Memory.
There were faces he remembered but had never seen. Names he had never spoken but still mourned. A battlefield that had once cried his name in screams and smoke… even if this world had no record of it.
"I was more than a soldier," he whispered.
"And less than a god."
Back in the lower streets, Darius walked through a healing city. The wounded were being tended in makeshift shelters. A child painted Ash's silhouette on a wall with coal, surrounded by stars and smoke.
"He's watching us," the child whispered to her younger brother.
"Who?" he asked.
She pointed to the black figure she had drawn.
"The man who doesn't stay dead."
Darius stopped, one hand tightening into a fist.
The legend was spreading. And not just as rumor — as belief.
In a dusty side alley, Kael leaned against a post, watching a pair of boys spar with sticks. One mimicked Ash's stance perfectly. The other pretended to fall, gasping dramatically.
They laughed.
Kael didn't.
He stared past them, toward the noble towers. "They're watching too," he muttered. "And they're not laughing."
Ash remained atop the tower until the sun was high.
Eventually, Silna joined him. She said nothing at first, sitting beside him. The wind caught strands of her silver hair and carried them like threads through the air.
"You didn't sleep," she said at last.
"No."
"You afraid?"
"No."
She nodded. "Then why are you still here?"
Ash was silent for a long time.
Then he answered.
"Because I was born in silence. Raised in it. And now I need to understand why the world is breaking it."
They sat without words for a while, letting the weight of stillness settle between them.
Silna spoke again, softer this time.
"Do you feel it?"
Ash turned to her. "Feel what?"
She gestured to the air, the sky, the city below.
"The air before lightning. The ground before fire. It's like the world's holding its breath… and waiting for you to exhale."
Ash didn't reply.
He didn't need to.
Because she was right.
Far away, beyond the city walls, deep in the mountain pass where no sun had touched in centuries, an old circle of stones flickered with ghostfire.
A name had been spoken.
Not aloud.
But felt.
Ash.
And with that name, the ancient ones began to stir.