Vahuriel was bleeding.
The stars had long since vanished, swallowed by the silence that had crept into the skies like rot into fruit. Where once constellations danced in rhythm with prophecy, now there was only stillness.
Shordet Amiti stood upon the cliffs of Tzurel's Edge, the wind tearing at his tattered cloak, its once-vibrant Maaminim embroidery dulled by ash and age. Beneath him, the world wheezed—fields barren, oceans churning without song, the earth groaning beneath hollow cities and broken temples.
In his hand, he held the obsidian pendant of his forebearer, Elzaphan, the First Lightbearer. Its markings flickered dimly, like the last embers of a fire that had once burned holy.
Behind him, footsteps approached—soft, deliberate, familiar.
"Still you listen," said Nivritiel, the elder Maaminim whose eyes shimmered with starlight long since faded from the heavens. "Even when the world no longer speaks."
"I listen because I'm afraid of what I might hear," Shordet replied without turning. "Or what I might not."
Nivritiel stood beside him now, frail and cloaked in silver-gray robes that whispered with every breeze. "You carry the blood of the Amitit. The stars once sang your name before it was ever spoken aloud. You were born beneath prophecy. The Redeemer's fire is in your bones."
He turned to her slowly, face etched with weariness.
"I am not a redeemer," he said flatly. "I am a relic. The last note of a forgotten song. My dreams are broken. My sight—clouded. If the world is to be redeemed, it will not be by me."
Nivritiel was silent for a long time.
Then: "Perhaps not. But the Redeemer cannot rise alone. The Mehimanim must be found—three across the four races, bound by oaths older than memory. If the Redeemer still lives, they will need the Mehimanim to awaken. Without them, there will be no rising. No return. No hope."
Shordet looked to the east, where the Sea of Lior thrashed wildly under a starless sky. Somewhere beyond that horizon lay the ruins of Atzimor, where the Tree People once shaped living homes. Far below the mountains, the tunnels of the Anshi Adma had collapsed into silence. And beneath the waves… who could say what survived?
"I'll find them," he said at last. "I'll find the Mehimanim. But not to save this world. Not for prophecy. I do it because the silence is too heavy to carry alone."
Nivritiel nodded. "That is enough—for now."
And as he turned to leave the cliff's edge, the wind stirred. In the distance, three faint lights shimmered on the horizon—one in the forest, one beneath the earth, and one beneath the sea.
The Redeemer had not yet risen.
But the road to them had begun.