The map from the scroll was not drawn.
It was written — as a chain of names, dates, and final known locations, each one already crossed out in ash.
Lira read them one by one by firelight.
Taren Vael – last seen near the Ashwood Frontier.
Seren Dhal – ex-Temple Archivist, exiled to Mirevale Ruins.
Narah – former Flameblood enforcer, disappeared in the drowned crypts of Vyr.
And last:
Rellen – Kael's shieldbearer. Reported dead. No place listed.
"They're not just names," Aerun said, crouched beside her. "They're threads."
Lira nodded.
"And if Ashmourn is growing… it's feeding off them."
She touched the shard at her chest.
It pulsed — once for each name.
Each pulse colder than the last.
☼ Ashwood Frontier – One Week Later
The frontier wasn't made of wood anymore.
It was a stretch of charred stone, wild reeds, and ashroot trees — trees that grew only where something had once been burned beyond recognition.
Lira and Aerun arrived by dusk.
There were no travelers.
No birds.
Only a wind that moved sideways — as if time here flowed wrong.
They found Taren Vael's mark carved into a tree stump: a flame curled backward, the old sign of a Flameking loyalist.
Aerun placed a hand on it.
"It's recent."
Lira touched the shard.
It pulsed.
Once.
Then — words filled her mind.
Not from the shard.
But from someone near.
"He's here."
"But he's not the same."
They followed the trail to a sunken cave lined with black moss.
Inside, they found him.
Taren Vael.
Older. Beard long and knotted. Eyes glowing faintly with emberlight — but flickering, like a flame losing memory of itself.
He didn't speak.
He simply stared at Lira.
Then said:
"You're carrying Kael's silence."
Lira nodded.
"And something older."
Taren shivered.
"Ashmourn is unmaking me. I remember too much. And not enough."
Lira stepped forward.
"We need you."
Taren's hands trembled.
He looked down at his palm — where a glyph had been branded into his flesh.
"He marked me. Long ago."
"Kael?" Aerun asked.
Taren shook his head.
"No. The other one."
Lira took his hand.
Let the shard touch the glyph.
There was a flash of heat.
A scream.
And a memory not her own surged through her:
Kael bleeding on a battlefield.
Taren shielding him from the Temple's last spell.
A promise:
"If I fall, carry only the truth."
Then fire.
Dark fire.
Ashmourn's flame.
It had touched Taren.
But hadn't consumed him.
Not yet.
When the vision faded, Taren gasped.
He blinked.
Color returned to his eyes.
"You brought it back. The choice."
Lira exhaled.
"You're coming with us."
☼ Mirevale Ruins – Three Days Later
The Mirevale ruins had long sunk into swamp and steam.
No map showed the path.
But Lira dreamed it.
In her sleep, the shard showed her Seren Dhal — a woman with books on her back and eyes that never blinked.
She awoke knowing exactly where to go.
Seren Dhal still lived.
She greeted them with no fear, only annoyance.
"You're late."
Lira blinked.
"You knew we were coming?"
Seren raised a scroll with Lira's name burned into the seal.
"The Codex wrote it before it burned."
Aerun's jaw dropped.
"You have Codex fragments?"
"No," Seren said. "I am one."
Seren had studied Kael's last flames — scrolls sealed in the wake of his death.
In them, she found references to a coming anti-memory — a "second silence" birthed not from death, but from deliberate forgetting.
Ashmourn.
She had written over three hundred wards to stop it.
All failed.
Now, she lived among ruined truth — a library of names that used to be real, now blank.
Lira told her about the chamber.
The shard.
The scroll.
Seren only nodded.
"Then you'll need Narah next."
She pulled a stone tablet from her robes.
On it: a glyph Lira had never seen.
It pulsed when near the shard.
"This will find her. If she still has a name."
That night, Lira sat alone.
She looked out across the swamp and wondered:
"What if I'm not strong enough?"
Taren came and sat beside her.
His voice quiet.
"Kael didn't win because he was strong."
"He won because he listened to what fire refused to say."
Lira held the shard.
It pulsed again.
This time, it spoke.
"Three found."
"Two still fade."
"But one watches you now."
Lira looked up.
And for a moment—just a flicker—she saw a shape in the fog.
A crown of ash.
Eyes like coal.
Ashmourn.
Watching.
Waiting.
Smiling.