The wind was still when they reached the Ridge of Mourning.
From the summit, the land sloped down into a basin carved from black marble and time: Elarion, the Cradle of Names.
It did not appear ruined.
It was too old to crumble.
Too proud to decay.
Its towers rose like thorns from the earth, glass-veined and crowned in silver runes that caught no light. The gates were shut. Always shut. Yet Valen could see them—faint outlines etched with his bloodline.
No city welcomed its exiled son.
Not this one.
"You were born here?" Dhera asked softly.
Valen nodded. "In the West Hollow."
Lyra, pale and silent, kept her eyes on the skyline.
"Do you remember it?" Dhera asked again.
Valen's mouth twitched—not a smile, not quite grief.
"I remember the sound it made when the bells tolled at midnight. They only rang when someone powerful died."
"And how many times did you hear them?"
Valen drew in a slow breath.
"Once."
They entered by the eastern ridge, following a sunken causeway lost to dust.
The city had no guards, but the air itself pushed back—thick, heavy, like walking through the remains of forgotten dreams.
No birds. No wind.
Only silence.
Dhera clutched the Chronicle. Its glow flickered, dimmer than before. Weaker.
"It doesn't like this place," she said.
Valen nodded. "No stories thrive here. Just endings."
The street names had been erased—carved clean from stone and doorpost. Statues stood where people once walked, cloaked in robes of ash. Their faces were all blank.
No eyes.
No mouths.
No names.
Lyra whispered, "It's like the city erased its own memory."
Valen stopped in front of one of the statues. Its hand held a broken scroll. On its chest, a single word had been carved—in Old Tongue:
"Witness."
The deeper they went, the more the city resisted.
Stairs cracked beneath their feet.
Walls whispered in voices that didn't match their mouths.
Once, Dhera tried to cast a lightward rune to read a closed gate—and her spell unraveled mid-air, recoiling in sparks and old blood.
"This place hates magic," she hissed.
"No," Valen said. "It remembers it."
They passed the Spire of Silences—a tower built without windows or entrances. Valen had lived near it, once. As a child, he'd asked his father why no one ever went inside.
His father had replied: "Because no one who does ever speaks again."
He hadn't believed him.
Until now.
At last, they reached the Sepulcher Hall.
It was less a building than a wound in the earth—an open vault of blackstone arches, surrounded by gravemarkers shaped like thrones.
Here, Elarion buried its kings.
Or, more truthfully, its mistakes.
Valen's footsteps slowed.
He turned down the left wing, where the deepest vaults lay.
Where the unclaimed were kept.
And stopped before an open niche, dust-choked and bare.
Dhera tilted her head. "There's no name."
Valen stared at the empty space.
"There was never one."
Lyra looked at him. "This was your tomb."
He nodded.
"I died before I was named."
A low pulse echoed from the Chronicle.
Not written text.
Not voice.
But memory.
Dhera fell to her knees, eyes wide. The book's spine snapped open—and a dozen pages fluttered forward, glowing ink searing into the air like stars.
The words weren't in Common Tongue.
They weren't in any known language.
And yet Valen read them.
Clearly.
"Ashara fell from the First Flame."
"Not born. Not made. Remembered before thought."
"She was not worshipped."
"She was."
The vault groaned.
Stone peeled back.
The statues lining the tombs turned to face them.
Blank faces suddenly watching.
And from the hollow beneath Valen's unmarked niche, something stirred.
Not a body.
Not a voice.
A presence.
Feminine. Infinite. Inescapable.
Lyra staggered back.
"I feel her," she gasped. "Ashara... she's watching us."
Dhera backed toward the stairs. "She's not bound to a place. She's bound to absence. She lives in what isn't remembered."
Valen remained still.
He looked into the darkness.
And whispered, "Then I was hers from the beginning."
The vault erupted in black flame.
The air trembled.
A vision took form—
Not before them, but within them.
Each of them saw a different face.
Dhera saw her mother, dead at the Arch-Court's hands.
Lyra saw a blood-drenched altar.
Valen saw—
Himself.
But older.
Crowned.
Sitting atop the Eighth Throne.
His hand held the Chronicle.
And in his other—a chain.
Lyra knelt beside him again, eyes hollow.
And beyond the throne, in the endless dark...
Ashara smiled.
The vision shattered.
They collapsed to the floor of the vault, gasping, shaking.
Valen rose first.
Blood streamed from his nose.
His eyes glowed faint silver.
"What was that?" Dhera asked hoarsely.
Valen looked at the unmarked niche.
Then to the Chronicle, which had sealed itself shut again.
"She's not just waking."
"She's already begun writing again."
Lyra wiped her mouth, trembling.
"She's rewriting you."
Valen didn't speak.
He didn't have to.
Somewhere, deep within Elarion—
A bell tolled.
Once.
For the first time in decades.