The marshes were worse than Kaelen remembered.
Not just wet — cursed-wet. The kind of damp that got into your bones and stayed there. Trees grew sideways, gnarled and swollen, their roots drinking from mud that smelled like old blood. Even the crows here looked tired.
Yreya led the way. She walked like she knew exactly where she was going, even when the path was nothing but twisted reeds and half-submerged stones.
Kaelen didn't ask how. Some things you don't question when someone's saving your life.
"Her name's Caldra," Yreya finally said, hours into the walk. "Used to work Veil salvage out of Mire's Edge. She's… not what you'd call friendly."
Bren snorted. "Great. More charm."
"She's the only one who knows how to read shard echoes," Yreya added. "If we want answers, she's it."
Kaelen didn't respond. His hand hovered near the shard in his coat — the second one. The one that now whispered things when he tried to sleep. Not always words. Just feelings.
Things like hunger.
Things like recognition.
They found Caldra's hut half-sunken in a drowned grove, wrapped in chains and Veilwire — the kind used to keep magic in or keep monsters out. Hard to tell which side she was on.
Yreya approached first, unarmed, calling out with a code phrase Kaelen didn't recognize. The door creaked open a few seconds later.
And then everything went sideways.
The air snapped.
The ground buckled.
Kaelen felt it before he heard it — a ripple in the Veil, like a heartbeat too big for the world. The second shard screamed in his chest.
And Caldra?
She was already on the porch, a long hooked staff pointed at his heart.
"You brought that into my swamp?"
Her voice was rough, sandpaper on stone. She had pale eyes, scarred skin, and fingers too steady for someone who lived alone with the Veil screaming outside her door.
Kaelen froze. Bren moved fast, weapon halfway drawn.
"Back off," Yreya snapped. "He didn't know."
Caldra didn't blink. "That's not a shard, girl. That's a cage."
Kaelen swallowed. "A cage for what?"
She lowered the staff slowly.
Then:
"Something that remembers dying."
Inside, the hut was filled with relics — some glowing faintly, others bound in salt and bloodthread. Kaelen's shard pulsed the second they crossed the threshold.
Caldra circled him like he was a puzzle she didn't like the look of.
"You've touched two shards," she said. "Most folk can't hold one without bleeding out of their dreams."
Kaelen didn't argue.
Caldra sat across from him, lit a sickly green flame with a flick of her fingers, and placed a copper dish between them.
"Drop it in."
Kaelen hesitated.
"Do it, or get out."
He placed the second shard into the dish.
It hissed. The flame turned black.
And suddenly, he saw her.
A woman — tall, wrapped in veils, standing on a tower that no longer existed. She was screaming as the Veil tore above her. Her body cracking, unraveling. Her name, her name—
"ASHRA."
Kaelen jerked back.
Caldra was already leaning over the flame, eyes wide.
"You brought her name back with you," she whispered. "You shouldn't be able to do that."
Kaelen's hands shook.
"I didn't choose this."
Caldra looked at him — really looked — and her voice went low.
"No. But she did."