The gates of Narethil no longer opened with fanfare or light.
They shimmered—wavering mirages of opal and gold, veined with illusion and despair. Aelric raised a hand, Tempestheart thrumming as it cut through the enchantments. Behind him, the Six moved in silence.
Every street shimmered with twisted beauty—petal storms, ghost echoes, laughter from shadows that had forgotten how to weep. But beneath it all, the city remembered.
It remembered him.
Kaelith.
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—flashback, swoosh swoosh this is a sound effect so you people can create imagination .....you welcome👁️👄👁️—
He stood before the High Council in silence, the golden oracles' chamber filled with something worse than outrage: fear.
"You see too much," Saelinne had said, voice like steel wrapped in silk. "And you act as if you are beyond fate itself."
"No," Kaelith had replied, gaze steady. "I simply wish to change it."
The chamber erupted. Some wept. Others shouted. But Viremon, Lord-Sage of the Fourth Circle, only stared at him with eyes carved from disappointment.
"You warned us of fire, and when it did not come, you brought the spark yourself."
"Because no one listened."
They branded his foresight as ambition. His visions as manipulation. And his silence as guilt.
When the guards came, Kaelith did not resist. He only turned to Aelric—watching from the dais, jaw clenched, sword at his side.
"You know the truth," Kaelith had whispered, voice cracking not with fear, but betrayal. "Don't let them forget."
And Aelric had said nothing.
---
—Now—
"Illusions this thick mean he's close," Lyra murmured, eyes narrowed. Her fingers danced over her bowstring, tracing sigils to ward off false memories.
"We're inside a dream he's built," Selene whispered. "His pain, his memory—woven into the stones themselves. If we're not careful, we become it."
As if summoned, the city shifted.
They walked past an alley and saw themselves—reflections of younger days. Korrak laughing with Kaelith over a campfire. Thorin and Kaelith locked in debate. Lyra showing him a carved feather pendant. Selene watching him from a balcony she no longer remembered standing on.
And Aelric… kneeling beside Kaelith, both of them bloody after the Siege of Cindermarch, hands clasped not in prayer, but in promise.
"These aren't defenses," Vaelorith said, voice tight. "They're reminders. He's not trying to keep us out. He wants us to see what we've forgotten."
Aelric paused. His knuckles whitened around Tempestheart.
"No," he said. "He wants us to feel what he did—before we kill him."
They pressed on, deeper into the heart of the city, toward the moon-tree and the shattered chamber beyond it.
Toward Kaelith.
The air thickened. Time thinned. And fate, long denied, began to stir.
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