The wind had changed.
Darin felt it the moment he stepped beyond the clearing. It was not the scent that shifted but the pressure. As if the air itself had thickened, wrapping around his limbs like gauze soaked in something old and listening. The forest no longer felt like something he walked through. It felt like something he had entered, entirely, and could no longer leave.
His fingers tightened around the crystal still warm in his palm. It pulsed faintly, like a second heartbeat. When he looked at it, its surface shimmered with soft, rippling light. Not steady. Not rhythmic. As if it responded to thought rather than touch. Sometimes, he could swear it reflected faces that weren't his.
Ashen was gone.
He turned in circles, scanning the broken tree line, calling her name aloud once, twice. No sound answered. Not even the sound of his own voice lingered long in the air. It was swallowed quickly by the dense, unnatural silence that pressed in from all directions.
He stood there for a long while, unsure if minutes were passing or hours.
Something had shifted during the fall. The forest was the same and yet entirely different. The colors had dulled, as if washed in ash. Leaves that once shimmered with green and gold were now a sickly gray. The soil beneath his boots crunched too loudly. Even the shadows looked deeper, more aware.
His legs carried him forward by instinct, his thoughts too tangled to guide him. He walked without choosing a direction, guided more by the subtle thrum of the crystal than his own sense of logic. It pulled faintly, a suggestion rather than a command.
The trees parted ahead, revealing a narrow path marked by strange black stones. Perfectly smooth. Each one bore a single symbol, etched into the surface with impossible precision. The symbols glowed faintly when he neared them. Some flickered. Some remained cold.
He knelt beside one of the stones and ran his fingers across its surface. It was cool to the touch, but a faint static snapped at his fingertips. A whisper filled his ear the moment he made contact. Not in words. Just the echo of breathing.
He rose slowly.
Something was here with him.
But it didn't feel entirely alive.
The path led deeper into the trees, winding like a coil of thought. The trees grew denser, pressing inward until the trail narrowed to a thread of compacted dirt between trunks as wide as carriages. The sky was almost entirely obscured now. Shafts of pale light pierced through in thin columns, like fingers trying to reach the forest floor but never quite touching it.
A soft hum began to rise. Barely audible at first. Like an insect trapped inside a glass jar. It came from the trees. Or perhaps from below. The crystal vibrated faintly in his hand, answering it. Syncing.
He stopped.
Ahead, the path ended.
Not in a wall or a cliff, but in a mirror.
It stood in the forest like a relic forgotten by time. Seven feet tall, with an iron frame wrapped in thorns of rusted gold. The surface was clean. Not a speck of dust. Not a single scratch. But it did not reflect the world behind him. Instead, it showed a room.
Stone walls.
Chains.
An altar with a sleeping figure beneath a dome of flickering energy.
Darin took a cautious step closer. The image in the mirror rippled, responding to his nearness. He reached out, fingers hovering an inch from the surface.
A whisper slid into his thoughts.
"Do you remember me yet?"
He jerked back. The voice again. The same one from the clearing. Soft. Calm. Female. Ancient and young all at once.
"You were close once," it continued. "Closer than you knew. Before the reset. Before they buried it."
The mirror pulsed with light. The image shifted.
Now he saw a battlefield. Broken towers. A sky split by code streaming like torn ribbons of electricity. He saw figures fighting. One of them moved like Darin. But the face was blurred, as if erased.
"You made a choice," the voice whispered. "And the cost was your name."
The light faded. The mirror dulled. The forest seemed to exhale.
Silence returned.
But Darin's mind did not.
Questions screamed inside him, but none had clear shapes. The memories teased at the edges of thought. Familiar places. Faces without names. A language he did not remember learning, suddenly forming in his mouth.
He stepped back from the mirror.
The path behind him had vanished.
In its place was a girl.
She stood barefoot in the moss, her skin pale as ash, her dress stitched from torn fragments of maps and glowing text. Her hair floated slightly, as if underwater. Her eyes, impossible to focus on, reflected shifting images, like windows into other places.
"You're late," she said simply.
Darin raised the crystal between them. It responded immediately, glowing brighter.
"Who are you?" he asked.
She tilted her head, expression unreadable.
"I'm the reason you forgot."
He took a step forward. She did not flinch.
"Why me?" he asked.
"Because you were the only one who questioned the victory."
He hesitated. "Victory?"
She nodded once. Slowly. "The war ended. The cost was memory. We buried the truth beneath layers of story. Then we lost the map."
The crystal in Darin's palm began to crackle with static.
"And now?" he asked.
"Now the truth wants to wake up."
The girl blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, they were no longer eyes. They were screens, pulsing with ancient code. Symbols he instinctively knew but could not name. She raised her hand and pointed toward the mirror.
"The next shard lies beyond," she said.
Darin stared at the mirror again. Its surface now showed a dark corridor lined with broken data panels. The smell of ozone drifted through the trees, as if bleeding from the image.
"Step through," she whispered. "Or this world will forget you too.