The chamber above the lake faded into memory as Raen, now wielding both the Silent Edge and the Echo Blade, led Nira and Talin through the tunnels beneath the ruins. With every step, the air around him seemed charged with voices—not loud, not intrusive, but a constant chorus of forgotten thoughts and fading memories. They were not haunting—they were listening.
Nira walked beside him, casting cautious glances. "You're... different now. Quieter, but heavier."
"I carry them now," Raen replied. "The memories of all who wielded the Whisper Arts before me. Their regrets. Their hopes. Their pain."
Talin raised an eyebrow. "That sounds like a curse."
Raen gave a faint smile. "It's not. It's a promise."
As they emerged from the underground, the sky above had shifted to twilight. But something was wrong. The wind carried a different sound now—a soft, rhythmic pulse. Not natural. Not wind.
Drums.
From the east, across the hilltops, came the echo of war drums. Faint but unmistakable. Nira's hand flew to her sword.
"No… they've come already?"
Talin grimaced. "The Order of the Severed Song. They've tracked the resonance of the Echo Blade, haven't they?"
Raen nodded. "They've been waiting for someone to disturb the old seal. Now they're coming to silence the past again."
He looked down at his left hand. The Echo Blade hummed quietly in its sheath, resonating with the unspoken tension in the air.
"I need to know more. About them. About why they fear this power so deeply."
Nira pointed to the west. "Then we head to the Monastery of Hollow Wind. That's where the First Whisperer trained. There might be something left."
Raen started forward, but Talin put a hand on his shoulder. "We don't have much time. The Severed Song doesn't travel lightly. If they know what you've taken, they'll send a Purger."
Raen paused. "Then let them."
His voice didn't shake. The old Raen—the hesitant one—was gone.
---
The Monastery of Hollow Wind had long since collapsed, its white stone towers reduced to shattered ribs beneath the open sky. But beneath the rubble, something still breathed. Not life. Not spirit.
A memory.
Raen placed his palm on the cracked altar at the center of the courtyard. A whisper curled from his lips, not in a language he knew, but one he remembered.
"விசைப்படும் ஒலி... விழுந்த குரல்."
The wind swirled.
The earth beneath the altar trembled—and then, with a hollow moan, a staircase opened downward, ancient stone steps leading into a crypt forgotten by time.
They entered in silence. Inside were murals painted in fading gold and black—depictions of sword dances, of men and women wreathed in wind and shadow. And at the end of the hall stood a stone dais, cracked but still proud.
A book rested atop it.
Bound in faded hide. Words etched in whisper script.
Raen approached, but as he reached out to touch it—
The shadows around them surged. A pressure like gravity and thunder crashed into the room.
From the far end of the crypt, a man emerged.
Clad in robes of deep crimson and bone-white armor, with a mask that covered half his face and a long-bladed halberd in his hands.
"The Severed Song sends its silence," he said. "Return what you've taken, Whisperbearer. Or drown in forgotten voices."
Raen didn't draw his blades.
He stepped forward and said, "Then let's see whose silence speaks louder."
---
To be continued