Two years after the Fall of Elaria
The dead didn't stay buried in the Ashen Vale.
Caelen Voruun knew this from bitter experience. In this place, death was just a suggestion, something the world acknowledged politely before twisting it into something cruel and half-living. He had watched corpses rise without eyes, scream without mouths, beg for gods that had long since abandoned them. The Vale was cursed, but not in the old way. It was... unfinished. Like a wound that refused to scab over.
And today, it was quiet.
Too quiet.
He stood atop a ridge of fractured stone, one boot balanced on a crumbling outcrop, the other pressed into soot that never washed away. Below him, the remnants of Calven's Watch lay in ruin. Towers snapped like brittle bones, their once-gleaming sigil lanterns blackened and cracked. Ash swirled in slow, deliberate spirals as if the wind itself was holding its breath.
Behind him, the scrape of metal on stone. Caelen didn't turn.
"You took your time," he said.
Talin Krev climbed the ridge, his cloak torn, armor streaked with dried blood. He moved like a man who had forgotten pain fast, quiet, practical. His hand rested on the hilt of his blade out of habit, not fear.
"Ran into marrow-gnawers," Talin said. "Three of them. Fast bastards. Smelled us before I could mask the trail."
Caelen arched a brow. "You alright?"
"They're not."
He stepped up beside Caelen, looking down at the ruined town. Neither man spoke for a long moment. The sky above them was a sickly orange-red, like a healing bruise, with clouds that curled unnaturally around the fractured moon.
"It's happening again," Talin said softly. "The ground feels wrong. Like it's listening."
"It always listens here," Caelen murmured. "It just doesn't always answer.
The two men made their way down toward the shattered Watchtower. The path was broken, riddled with burn marks and collapsed ley-lines that once fed the town's magic. Now they lay exposed like veins, pulsing faintly beneath layers of soot and bone.
"Crypt entrance is beneath the barracks," Talin said. "Blocked by debris, but not sealed. I heard something chanting, maybe. But no words."
"Not a breach?" Caelen asked.
"No ley-warp, no glow, no rupture. This feels older. Deeper."
Caelen didn't like that. The Vale was full of traps left behind by things smarter than men and crueler than gods. They weren't just fighting monsters anymore. They were fighting memory, twisted and sentient, echoing through the raw threads of what remained of magic.
They returned briefly to the cave they'd made into a base. The mouth was disguised with woven branches and ward-glyphs carved into the stone, Lysira's work.
Inside, it smelled of ink, chalk, and steel. The low glow of stabilizing runes bathed the walls in pale green. Lysira Vael sat cross-legged near a shallow basin, her fingers dripping silver ley-ink as she traced a containment ring across a shard of moonstone.
She didn't look up. "Something's pulling on the girl again," she said.
Caelen glanced toward the back of the cave. Meira lay curled beneath a blanket, her breathing shallow, skin slick with sweat. Her hand gripped the shard like a lifeline.
"I felt it," Caelen said. "It's not a tether. It's a call."
"More like a beacon." Lysira's tone was flat, but beneath it, there was something else.. concern, maybe. Or fear. "Something beneath the Watch wants her to remember."
Caelen knelt beside Meira. Her eyes moved rapidly behind shut lids. Her lips twitched, whispering something inaudible.
"She's seeing it again," he said.
Lysira's gaze flicked toward him. "The tower?"
He nodded.
"Gods help us," she muttered.
"You don't believe in gods," Talin said from behind her.
"Exactly."
That night, Caelen stood guard at the mouth of the cave. The wind carried distant, broken melodies; like children singing underwater. The moon hung low in the sky, cleaved in two but still watching.
He thought of the last time he'd held his daughter. Of the way her hand fit in his. Of how he'd failed her. The war hadn't taken her. He had. With his choices. With his faith.
Footsteps approached light, deliberate. Meira.
She stepped up beside him, hair tangled, eyes too old for her face.
"I saw you," she said. "In the dream. You died again."
Caelen looked at her. "How?"
"You knelt. You didn't fight. You said my name."
"And what was it?"
She frowned. "Not the one I have now."
They stood together in silence. Then she spoke again.
"There's something down there. In the crypt. It remembers what we were before we were born."
"And what were we?"
She looked up at him, voice barely a whisper.
"Fire."
The next morning, they descended into the ruins of Calven's Watch.
The crypt door had not been opened in a hundred years. It groaned as Lysira broke the last ward, runes flaring weakly in protest. The darkness inside was absolute, untouched by sun or moonlight.
And beneath it, something waited.
Not to strike.
Not to feed.
But to speak.