The silence after the storm was heavier than the thunder that had shattered the sky.
Reven crouched by the edge of a fractured stone ridge, his gauntlet-clad hand gripping a piece of warped metal jutting from the rubble. The wind stirred dust through the shattered remains of the outpost below. Once a Skyborn observatory, now only charred beams and broken glass remained—testimony to what was lost, or taken.
Lirien stood behind him, silent, watching the horizon with narrowed eyes. The hem of her coat fluttered, torn from battle, streaked with blood that wasn't hers. Her face was cold again. Detached. Reven had seen that look before—the same mask she wore when she didn't want to be asked how many lives she'd taken to protect her own.
"It wasn't just a raid," she said. "They were searching for something."
Reven rose slowly, dust rolling off his cloak. "They found it?"
Lirien's eyes dropped to the centre of the crater. A shallow pit where the Skyborn's ancient archives once pulsed with light and memory. Nothing now but ash.
"No," she said. "But they were close. Too close."
Reven turned, gaze locking with hers. "Then we move faster."
Behind them, Kaela climbed over a crumbled pillar, bloodied but not broken. She wiped her blade on a strip of cloth and sheathed it in a fluid motion. Her eyes caught Lirien's, then Reven's, and her jaw tightened.
"They left survivors," she said. "Two. Scared, half-burnt, but alive."
Reven's brows furrowed. "And?"
Kaela nodded toward the ruins. "One said the attackers weren't fully human. Masked. Branded. They moved like soldiers, but smelled wrong. Like… rot and iron."
Reven exhaled slowly. "Wraithforged."
Lirien's expression darkened. "That's impossible."
"No," Reven said. "That's a message."
He stepped down the ridge, boots crunching on blackened glass, and knelt beside the ashes of the archives. Buried beneath the soot was a shard of a memory crystal—cracked, bleeding faint flickers of old light. He picked it up, wiped it against his sleeve, and held it toward the sky.
A projection flared briefly: an image of a tower, cloaked in mist, spires broken by time. Reven's grip tightened.
Kaela peered over his shoulder. "That place again."
"It keeps showing up," Reven muttered. "Same angles. Same structure. Always before something burns."
Lirien's voice was quiet. "The Archive of Aeons."
Reven looked at her sharply.
"That's what the Skyborn called it," she said. "Long before your kind walked this land. A myth. A vault of knowledge too dangerous to preserve, too cursed to destroy."
Kaela scoffed. "Sounds like exactly what our enemies would want."
Reven nodded. "Then we find it first."
Night fell fast over the ruined heights, shadows spilling like ink through the broken arches and collapsed towers. They made camp in a half-standing corridor, its ceiling scorched and walls marked by claw-like burns.
Kaela sat sharpening her blade, the rasp of stone on metal rhythmic, grounding. Lirien perched on a broken statue above, staring at the stars as if trying to read them. Reven sat alone, near the fire, turning the crystal over in his fingers.
The flames cast shadows on his face—lines worn deeper from guilt and time. He remembered the last time he had seen Wraithforged. The last time he'd failed to stop them.
Kaela's voice broke the silence. "You're brooding again."
He didn't look up. "Just remembering."
She set the blade down and leaned back, arms folded. "You can't change the past."
"No. But I can stop it from repeating."
Lirien jumped lightly to the ground, her boots barely making a sound. "There's a storm coming," she said. "Not the weather kind. The kind that leaves bones behind."
Reven pocketed the crystal. "We need to move at dawn. Before the trail fades."
Lirien's gaze lingered on the fire. "If we go after the Archive, we go into legend. Into stories mothers used to scare their children. People vanish trying to find it."
Reven met her eyes. "We've already vanished, Lirien. The world doesn't remember what it lost—it only fears what's coming."
A long silence stretched between them.
Kaela's voice came again, softer this time. "Then let's give it something to remember."
That night, Reven dreamt of fire.
Not the consuming kind, but the kind that whispered. That reached under your skin and showed you what you didn't want to see. Faces—Veyna's twisted smile, Raze's furious snarl, Sera's cold calculations. Then came a new face. Old eyes. A cloaked figure standing in the ruins of that same mist-shrouded tower. It raised a hand toward him.
"Too late," it whispered. "Too late again."
Reven awoke breathless, heart hammering in the darkness.
He didn't sleep again.