The wind changed by morning.
Colder. Sharper. With it came the scent of old stone, burned wood, and forgotten judgment.
Nyxia walked with her hood low, cloak heavy with ash. Loque'nahak padded beside her in silence. He hadn't spoken—not through their bond, not with his eyes—since the encounter at the circle. The corruption hadn't broken him. But it had left something behind. A wound deeper than flesh.
She adjusted her pace to keep his movements easy.
The forest thinned around them. Pines overtook oaks. Then the trees gave way to jagged cliffs and winding switchbacks that climbed toward a jagged ridge carved into the mountainside.
The ruins of Warden's Wake crowned the peak.
She saw them from below: watchtowers shattered by time, banners long rotted, and moonstone statues leaning like mourners over broken battlements. It had once been a stronghold—a Warden prison and sanctuary both—where Night Elves brought their worst truths to be silenced.
It was the only place left that might still have answers.
The Veil had changed. The flower proved that. The dagger proved that.
But she needed more.
She needed knowledge that hadn't been buried with Elune's silence.
They reached the outer gate by midday.
The iron portcullis was jammed halfway up, covered in vines that looked more like veins. She ducked beneath it, her hand on the dagger at her belt. The stone underfoot had been scorched black in places—old battle marks, not recent. But someone had cleared a path through the debris.
Someone was here.
Loque stopped and sniffed the air.
Then growled.
Not fear.
Recognition.
The central courtyard was in ruins.
Massive cracks split the ground. Training dummies and weapons racks lay shattered, half-swallowed by moss. A once-grand statue of Maiev Shadowsong had toppled, her twin blades buried in the earth like a grave marker.
Nyxia's boots echoed off stone as she crossed the square toward the inner keep.
Then she heard it.
The unmistakable scrape of steel.
Followed by a voice sharp enough to cut through stone.
"I didn't expect you to come back."
Nyxia turned slowly.
A woman stepped from the shadows beneath a crumbling archway. Tall. Clad in dark leather armor etched with crescent moons and binding runes. Her face was severe—sharp cheekbones, scars along her jaw, hair bound tight in silver-threaded braids.
Warden Alari.
Nyxia knew her from whispers.
A relic of the old guard. One of the few Wardens who'd survived the fall of the Temple and refused to kneel to Tyrande's softening hand.
And judging by the blade already in Alari's hand, she hadn't come for a chat.
"I didn't expect you to be alive," Nyxia said evenly.
Alari's mouth twitched. "Pity."
The tension thickened between them.
Loque held his ground, though he kept to Nyxia's right flank—watchful but still recovering.
"I know why you're here," Alari said. "You've stirred the forest. Burned roots with forbidden flame. Broken a binding stone. The air reeks of it."
Nyxia didn't respond.
"What did you find?"
Nyxia met her gaze. "What was buried."
Alari stepped closer. "You're not the first to come looking for what lies beneath. The others didn't come back."
Nyxia stepped forward to match her. "I'm not the others."
A long silence followed.
Then Alari sheathed her blade.
"Follow me."
The interior of the keep had fared better than the rest.
A few halls remained intact, their walls lined with cracked murals of the War of the Ancients. They passed through one chamber filled with broken armor and empty bindings—the echoes of prisoners long gone.
Finally, Alari stopped before a sealed door carved with both Darnassian and runes older than the Kaldorei tongue.
"The archive," she said. "You'll find answers here. Maybe too many."
Nyxia raised an eyebrow. "You're just letting me in?"
"I'm not a jailer anymore," Alari muttered. "Besides, if what you're chasing is real… we're going to need more than chains."
She placed a hand to the seal and whispered a command.
The door shuddered. Then opened inward with the sigh of ancient air.
The archive was cold.
Rows of crystal memory tablets lined the walls, each etched with sigils that hummed faintly. A central pedestal held a hollow orb flickering with blue light.
Nyxia approached slowly, feeling the hum of power rise as her tattoos responded.
She reached out, placed her hand over the orb, and whispered:
"Show me."
Light flared.
The orb projected an image into the space before her—flickering, incomplete.
She saw… herself.
Or something wearing her shape. Pale. Hair like moonlight. Void-black eyes. But older. Harder.
This version of her stood in the ruins of a battlefield, surrounded by corpses. Not just elves. Not just humans.
Beasts. Spirits. Dracthyr. Things with wings made of shadow.
Behind her, a ring of figures—six others, all cloaked—stood with hands raised in unison.
At the center of the circle: a wound in the air. A tear.
A voice echoed from the vision.
"The Veil is not a door. It's a scar. And we are what seeps through."
The vision collapsed.
Nyxia staggered back.
Alari caught her arm.
"You saw it, didn't you?" the Warden asked. "The moment it breaks."
Nyxia nodded.
Her heart thundered. Not from fear.
From familiarity.
"I've seen them in my dreams," she whispered. "The others. The circle."
"Then it's already begun," Alari said grimly. "And you're at the center of it."
They stood in silence for a while longer.
The archive still glowed faintly, but no more visions came.
Nyxia turned away.
"There's more I need. Something from the old texts. A name."
Alari raised an eyebrow. "Who?"
"I don't know," Nyxia said. "But they're connected to the flower that bloomed at the Carrion Circle."
That got Alari's attention.
"You made it to Carrion Bloom and lived?"
Nyxia nodded.
Alari looked at her with something new—respect, or maybe fear.
"Then you're not just part of the prophecy," she said. "You're its first echo."
That night, Nyxia stood on the edge of the keep, staring into the mountains below.
Loque lay nearby, sleeping fitfully.
The stars above were dimmer here, as if the Veil had begun to creep into the sky itself.
She held her father's dagger in one hand. The other traced the lines of her tattoos, still faintly pulsing.
She knew where she had to go next.
The others in her visions weren't just echoes. They were real.
And they were scattered.
If she didn't find them before the Veil did, whatever was coming would burn the world hollow.
And she was tired of ashes.