Three nights passed.
The Archivist did not return.
The sky above Eltherra cracked with black lightning—no storm, no rain, just heatless flashes etched across the clouds like runes in pain. Rumors spread of statues weeping blood, of birds flying backward, of dreams where people woke screaming someone else's name.
And still, Eltherra forgot.
One person each morning.
Gone from memory.
Gone from stone.
Gone from records.
Dhera stood by the city archives, weeping over a blank registry where her mother's name had been.
"I can't even remember what she looked like," she whispered.
Lyra gripped her shoulder. "You still feel her. That's enough."
But even as she said it, her voice trembled.
Because she had forgotten her father's eye color.
And Valen had started writing his name down in a notebook each night—just in case.
They stayed hidden in the Bonevaults, trying to decipher the remainder of the Dreamkeeper's scroll. Only fragments remained legible.
"...the Crown of Silence shall fall..."
"...seven thrones broken, one devours..."
"...the final King is not a King..."
None of it made sense.
Until Dhera found the old map.
Seven markings.
Each one in a ruined city.
Valen traced them with a finger. "These must be the Thrones."
Lyra nodded. "And one remains."
A red circle.
Kaelruhm.
The sunken citadel beneath the Mirror Sea.
Dhera paled. "No one sails there. The fog eats ships. And the water screams."
Valen looked up. "Then we'll walk across the bones of drowned kings if we must. Because the last throne must fall."
They prepared to leave that night.
But Eltherra had changed.
Not in silence.
In noise.
In panic.
Screams echoed from the upper spires. Bells clanged—not in mourning, but alarm. Citizens ran through the streets clutching children, relics, anything they could carry.
Valen grabbed a man by the arm. "What's happening?"
"The Charnel Guard!" he cried. "They're here! They're rounding up the veiled!"
Dhera's face went cold. "They mean us."
The Charnel Guard were not soldiers.
They were harvesters.
Clad in obsidian armor etched with teeth, they rode eyeless hounds and bore spears tipped with memory-wax. Their orders came from no kingdom. They answered only to the Hollow Court—servants of the Forgotten Kings.
They moved through Eltherra like a scythe.
And they had names.
Valen read them off the list posted on a wall.
Lyra's was at the top.
They ran.
Not to escape.
To warn others.
In the underground hospice near the root-spires, a dozen memory-veiled children hid with their caretakers. All of them marked. All of them remembered too much.
Valen burst in. "They're coming. We move now."
The head caretaker—a blind woman named Maellen—nodded. "We have tunnels. They run beneath the river."
Dhera guided the children.
Lyra watched the skies.
Valen held the door.
When the first hound came, it didn't bark.
It spoke.
"One of you bears the Vessel."
Then it lunged.
Valen moved faster.
His blade—Sorrowfang—sliced clean through its skull, but the beast did not fall.
It laughed, bloodless.
Then reformed.
Dhera screamed, "They're not alive!"
Lyra raised her hand.
The second Mark on her palm shimmered.
"I remember your death."
The hound froze.
Cracked.
And shattered into white salt.
Valen stared.
"That... was new."
Lyra breathed hard. "I didn't know I could do that."
The other hounds fled.
The Charnel Guard stepped back.
And for the first time since this began—
They feared her.
In the tunnels, Maellen led them through winding paths laced with old bones and whispering stones. Every few feet, Valen saw signs of something older than Eltherra—symbols burned into the walls with time.
At the deepest chamber, a strange altar sat abandoned.
Dhera stopped. "This wasn't built by men."
"No," Valen agreed. "This is drakoncarved."
Lyra knelt beside the altar.
"Something was sealed here. Long ago."
They heard the voice then.
Faint.
But real.
"You do not carry the Mark."
Valen spun.
Behind them, a boy stood in the shadows. Maybe ten years old. Hair white as milk. Eyes empty.
"You are trespassing."
Maellen dropped to one knee. "High Memory. Forgive us."
Valen whispered, "A High Memory? Here?"
The boy walked toward Lyra.
Then smiled.
"But you carry something older."
He reached toward her palm.
The Mark pulsed.
And the boy screamed—like he was being torn apart.
He vanished in smoke.
They made it out of the tunnels by dawn.
Into the eastern marshes beyond Eltherra's reach.
The children scattered toward nearby shelters.
Maellen bowed to them.
"We owe you our memories," she said. "If they survive, we survive."
Valen turned to Lyra.
"You wield something beyond any relic now."
"I don't understand it."
"You will."
That night, Lyra stood watch while Valen slept.
She stared into the marsh fog.
And remembered the voice in her dream.
The woman with the candle.
She whispered again.
And this time, Lyra heard the name.
"Arienna."
She mouthed it.
Then gasped.
Because it burned her tongue.
The name had been forbidden.
And now it was hers.