There was a custom in Hallowmere.
On the eighth night of the Festival, the dead were allowed to speak—if their bones were washed in moonwater and laid upon the Emberstone.
Arjuna didn't believe in such rites. Or hadn't.
But tonight, the gravekeeper came to him.
"You bear a wound in your memory, knight," the old man rasped, lifting his lantern. "The Emberstone doesn't heal wounds like that. But it can show you what cut you."
Tellen watched silently as Arjuna followed the man out toward the hillside grave. The village was quiet—too quiet. The festival stalls had been abandoned. Even the masked children had fled indoors.
Only the dead were awake.
The Emberstone sat in a small circle of ruins, like a forgotten altar. Veined with red crystal, it pulsed faintly in the moonlight. Bones—dozens—lay around it, arranged like offerings.
The gravekeeper handed Arjuna a bowl of water.
"Choose a name," he said. "Any name you don't remember."
Arjuna hesitated.
Then whispered: "Vaelin."
The gravekeeper blinked. "We have no such grave."
"I know," Arjuna said. "But she's dead to me. That's enough."
He poured the moonwater over the stone.
The air went still.
The ground trembled.
And the Emberstone began to glow.
Vision.
Not memory—no. Something older. Something that had been buried.
A battlefield beneath a red sky. Corpses stretched for miles. And in the center: Arjuna knelt, sword broken, armor cracked.
Across from him stood a woman.
She wore no crown, but her presence ruled. Hair like stormlight. Eyes like ashfire. And blood on her hands.
"You knew this would happen," she whispered.
"I did."
"And you did it anyway."
"I had to."
The woman stepped forward. She touched his face.
Then drove a dagger into her own chest.
"Forget me. Let me become your curse. Only then will you live."
He screamed.
And woke.
Back in the present, the Emberstone had dimmed. The gravekeeper was gone.
Only Tellen remained, his face pale.
"You saw her again," he said.
Arjuna said nothing.
Tellen sighed. "The village will demand a memory offering tomorrow. It's part of the rite. If you don't give one, they'll think you brought the dead with you."
"Maybe I did."
"You said her name again—Vaelin. Who is she?"
Arjuna didn't answer.
Instead, he turned back toward the Binding Tree. Toward the place where the ribbons still whispered.
"She called herself a curse," he murmured. "But I think… she was a promise."
That night, the bones on the Emberstone stirred. One skull turned toward the mountain road, as if watching.
As if remembering.
And in a tower of obsidian in the Demon Continent, Nyssara gazed into a mirror of bone and sighed.
"Don't remember me yet," she said softly. "Not until it breaks you."