The wind has a memory here. It hums through the glass plains like a voice trying to remember the words to a prayer. Every note feels older than the light.
We camp in the hollow of a fractured ridge. The ash-glass walls catch faint reflections of my pack—twelve now, if I count the shadows that move when no one else does. I tell myself it's a trick of the emberlight. I tell myself a lot of things.
Vael sleeps near the mouth of the shelter, his breath slow, steady. Ryn watches the horizon, tail twitching in small, irritated arcs. The others rest in clustered knots of warmth and trust. I should feel safe among them, but the night's too still, like the world's holding its breath to listen.
I close my eyes and hear the System whispering again, its voice broken into glass shards:
〈…li — ty asc… - on - …〉
〈…pack int - gr - - ate …?〉
Each syllable burns through my thoughts, half-question, half-command. When it fades, I almost miss it.
Ryn glances over. "It's talking again, isn't it?"
"I don't know," I lie. "Maybe it's just the wind."
She doesn't press. None of them do anymore. They've seen me stare too long into the dark and answer words they can't hear. Maybe they've learned that faith is quieter than doubt.
The ridge hums under us. Every few heartbeats a tremor runs through the ground, as if something vast is turning in its sleep beneath the crust. Vael calls it the Husk's breath. I call it the sound of time breaking its bones.
We find another traveler at dawn.
He's crouched beside a fissure, hands pressed into the glass as if listening through it. His skin looks carved from coal and moonlight; eyes faintly luminous beneath a cracked mask of bone. An elf once, maybe, before the ash rewrote his blood.
When he looks up, I see no fear—only exhaustion sharpened to a blade.
"You walk with many," he says, voice dry as cinders. "You lead them?"
"I try."
He studies me a moment longer. "Then you'll need a map. The Husk doesn't hold still for the living."
He draws a line across the glass with a shard of obsidian, and the fissure flares pale blue. The ground beneath us ripples—patterns of bones and roots pulsing like veins.
"This world remembers paths that no longer exist," he murmurs. "Follow them too far, and they remember you back."
"Who are you?" I ask.
He smiles without humor. "Once I was called Kael. Now I'm just noise."
Before I can answer, the wind catches his scent and carries it away. When I look again, he's gone—no prints, no warmth, just the faint outline of his map fading into the glass.
Vael growls. "We shouldn't trust ghosts."
"Maybe," I whisper, tracing the faint glow where Kael stood. "But ghosts seem to trust me."
The tremors grow stronger that night. I dream of a cathedral made of ribs, and of my own voice echoing from inside the bones. Do you remember your shape? the echo asks. Do you still want it?
When I wake, the ridge is cracked open, and a pale light seeps up through the wound in the earth. It smells of salt, rust, and ancient breath.
The pack gathers, uneasy. Ryn whispers, "Is it calling us?"
"No," I say. But my paws move forward anyway.
Each step down feels like falling through someone else's memory. The air thickens, heavy with whispers that aren't language. My claws leave trails of light on the glass.
At the base of the fissure, the glow resolves into a surface like water, but colder. Beneath it, shapes drift—half-formed bodies, perhaps dreaming themselves into being. The light pulses in time with my heartbeat.
〈…syn - chro - …complete …〉
〈…loyalty in ascension…〉
The words crawl across the back of my eyes. I feel my pack behind me—close, breathing the same thin air, waiting for my signal.
I don't give it.
Instead, I reach toward the water. It ripples once, twice, and then the reflection staring back at me isn't a wolf. It's the girl I used to be—eyes wide, human, terrified. She opens her mouth, and ash pours out.
I jerk my hand back. The image lingers for a heartbeat before dissolving into the slow swirl of light.
Vael steps up beside me. "What did you see?"
"Nothing," I tell him. The lie tastes like iron. "Just the past pretending to be useful."
We stay there until the light fades and the fissure seals itself, leaving only the hum of the plains and the slow, restless breath of the world.
Later, when the others sleep again, I press my forehead to the ground and whisper, "If you can hear me… stop."
The wind answers in fractured code:
〈…cannot… stop… you are… us …〉
And for the first time, I'm not sure whether it's mercy or warning.