The wasteland stretched before them, a vast sea of dust and ruins, but the air still carried the weight of the battle. Reven flexed his fingers, feeling the dull ache where Raze's strike had landed. The Iron Warlord had tested him—not just in skill, but in something deeper.
Raze had been holding back. And that unsettled him more than the fight itself. Kaela was silent as they walked. She moved with purpose, but her ears twitched every so often, betraying the thoughts running through her mind.
Reven finally spoke. "He knew you."
Kaela didn't look at him. "I knew him."
A pause.
"He called you 'little wolf.'" She exhaled through her nose, the ghost of a smile flickering across her face before it vanished. "It's what I was, once. Before I left the clans."
"And now?"
Kaela stopped, turning to face him fully. "Now I'm the one walking away."
Reven studied her. There was more to it than that, but she wasn't ready to share it yet. He understood that well enough. A gust of wind kicked up ash and dust around them. Kaela's ears twitched again.
She reached for her bow. "We're being followed."
Reven didn't question it. He placed his hand on the hilt of his sword, muscles tensed. Then he heard it. Soft, deliberate steps—too controlled to be an animal, too cautious to be another hunting party. Whoever it was, they were waiting for the right moment.
Kaela's bowstring creaked as she drew it. "Show yourself."
A beat of silence. Then, from behind a jagged outcrop of stone, a figure emerged. Not Fangborn. Not human. A woman, wrapped in layered robes of faded white and gold, her hood pulled low over her face. She moved like a whisper, her feet barely disturbing the dust. An aura of something old clung to her.
Reven's grip tightened on his sword. "Who are you?"
The woman slowly lifted her head, revealing eyes the colour of storm-lit skies.
"I am Veyna," she said, her voice like dry parchment. "And I have been waiting for you."
Veyna stepped closer, unhurried, as if the desert itself bent to her will. The air felt heavier, charged with something unseen.
"You wield the Forsaken Blade," she murmured, eyes locking onto the weapon at Reven's side.
His fingers tensed around the hilt. "And?"
Veyna tilted her head slightly. "And you do not yet understand what it will cost you."
Kaela didn't lower her bow. "You knew we were coming."
The Bone Witch's gaze flicked to her. "No. But I knew someone would come. The world is shifting, and those who carry relics of the past…" She looked back at Reven. "They do not walk unnoticed."
Reven's pulse quickened. "You know what this sword is."
"I know what it was," Veyna corrected. "And what it might become again."
Silence stretched between them, thick as the desert heat.
Reven exhaled. "Then tell me."
Veyna lifted a hand. From the folds of her robes, she withdrew a fragment of bone, smooth and worn with age. It pulsed faintly, as if responding to the air around it. She turned it between her fingers.
"This world has forgotten the truths buried beneath its ruins," she said. "The Forsaken Blade was not always a weapon of war. It was something else. A key. A lock."
Reven's grip on the hilt tightened. "A lock to what?"
Veyna looked at him then, truly looked, as if measuring the depth of his soul.
"The end of everything," she said simply.
Kaela stiffened beside him.
Reven forced himself to hold her gaze. "You're saying this sword is dangerous?"
"I am saying it is not just a sword," Veyna corrected. "It is a fragment of something much older. And once, long ago, it was meant to remain buried."
A wind stirred the dust around them.
"And yet, here you are," she murmured.
Reven felt the weight of her words settle deep in his chest. The blade at his hip—he had taken it in the ruins, feeling the pull of something he couldn't explain. Now, the pull was stronger.
Veyna stepped forward, her expression unreadable. "If you wish to understand the path you walk, you must seek the Hall of Echoes."
Kaela's brow furrowed. "That place is a myth."
Veyna's lips curved slightly. "So is the idea that the dead do not whisper."
She placed the bone fragment in Reven's hand. It was warm to the touch, thrumming with something just beneath the surface.
"This will guide you," she said. "But be warned, Reven of the Hollow. The past is not kind to those who dig too deep."
She turned to leave.
"Wait," Reven called after her. "Why help me?"
Veyna paused. "Because," she said, looking at him over her shoulder, "I once knew a man who carried that blade."
A beat.
"And he did not die well."
Then, without another word, she vanished into the dunes. Reven turned the bone fragment in his fingers, feeling the pulse within it.
Kaela crossed her arms. "That was unsettling."
He nodded, still staring after the Bone Witch. Then he looked down at the fragment again.
"The Hall of Echoes," he murmured.
Kaela sighed. "So we're actually doing this, then?"
Reven tightened his grip.
"We don't have a choice."
The Forsaken Blade hummed softly at his side, as if it had been waiting for him to say those words. As if it had always known this path. And that was the part that scared him most.