The journey to Duskvale Ridge was steeped in silence—not the peaceful kind, but the kind that pressed against the ribs. No birds. No beasts. Only wind whispering through brittle branches and cracked stone.
Asher led the way, eyes sharp, blade ready. Emilia and Liaen followed close behind, while Elira flickered at their rear, faint as a dying ember.
Duskvale had once been a mining town. Abandoned decades ago when the ley lines beneath it grew volatile. Now, its ruined towers jutted from the mountainside like broken teeth, swallowed by fog and the weight of years.
Emilia paused at the shattered gates. "It feels... hollow."
"No souls," Elira murmured. "Not even echoes. Something fed here."
Liaen tightened his grip on his spear. "Then it's still hungry."
The ruins sloped into a wide crater—the remnants of the mine. Faint ritual markings scarred the stone: circles, runes, names scratched in languages long dead.
"What is this?" Emilia asked, kneeling beside a rune still pulsing with residual energy.
Asher crouched beside her. "A soul-binding circle. But it's fractured—like someone tried to force a binding and it failed."
"No," Emilia whispered, her voice distant as her pupils narrowed. "They succeeded. Just not here."
A vision surged through her—figures chanting in broken tongues, blood seeping into stone, names ripped from their very souls.
She staggered back, gasping. "They're offering their identity. Sacrificing their sense of self to become something else."
Liaen swore under his breath. "Madness."
"No," Elira said. "Worse. Willing madness."
They pressed deeper into the crater. The ground throbbed with unstable ley lines, pulsing beneath their boots like a wounded heartbeat. Emilia's aura shimmered faintly, reacting to the fractured current in the air.
Then the voices came.
Whispers. Overlapping. Fragmented. Names spoken and unspoken.
Figures emerged from the mist—robed silhouettes, stitched in ash. Eyes like voids. Mouths absent, replaced by cracked slits stretched too wide.
"Echo-bound," Asher hissed. "They've severed their souls from identity."
The cultists attacked in silence. Their weapons—shards of crystallized soul matter—slashed through air and light. Their screams were psychic, hammering the mind.
Liaen moved like a storm, spear flashing. Asher's sword carved through shadows with brutal precision.
But Emilia stood frozen—eyes silver-bright, hands trembling.
"Elira," she gasped. "They're calling to me. Through the rift. Through what's still inside."
Elira appeared at her side, her ghostly hand resting on Emilia's shoulder. "You are not them. You remember who you are."
"I don't know if I do."
Across the field, Asher roared, "Emilia! If you doubt now, you lose!"
Her breath caught.
Then she whispered:
"Emilia Gray."
The name ignited like a flame.
A radiant pulse burst from her chest, silver and pure, blasting the nearest cultists into ash and silence. Her voice echoed through the crater—not a scream, but a song. Not sorrowful—defiant.
When the dust settled, the remaining cultists fled into the lower tunnels.
Emilia knelt in the cracked earth, exhausted but unbroken. Her eyes were dull, but her spine straight.
"You came back," Asher said.
"I remembered my name," she whispered. "And yours."
They made camp in a shallow stone alcove as darkness fell over Duskvale.
Liaen tended to his wounds in silence. Asher sat near Emilia, wrapped in blankets and sleep. Her energy was spent—her soul quiet for now.
"She's stronger than I ever was," Elira whispered, hovering beside him.
"No," Asher said softly. "You're both the reason I'm still here."
Elira smiled. "Then stay. No matter how dark it gets."
Asher nodded. "We go down tomorrow. To the heart of it."
Elira turned toward the black mouth of the mine.
"And to the name no one dares speak."