The battlefield still smoldered beneath the fading light of false stars.
Not a single drop of blood stained the earth, but something far heavier had been spilled—memory. The land groaned beneath invisible weight, echoing with pain that didn't come from wounds of the body, but from the soul of the realm itself.
Seren moved through smoke. Every breath felt like swallowing fire. Her skin tingled with the residue of the Hollow Flame's resonance, still alive and whispering in her veins. The Hollow Tree pulsed behind her, golden veins glowing dimly beneath its bark, responding to something deep within her.
Around her, the survivors of the battle moved like sleepwalkers. Some dragged the wounded toward makeshift shelters. Others simply knelt in the soil, hands on their heads, as if praying for answers they no longer believed would come.
Kael found her first. He didn't speak—just placed a hand on her shoulder.
Even if Nyssara was gone, the echo of her magic lingered.
Arlya hadn't moved since the battle ended. She stood barefoot beneath the Hollow Tree, her skin faintly glowing, her eyes unfocused—watching things no one else could see.
"She's listening," Seren murmured.
"To what?" Kael asked.
Seren didn't answer. She feared the truth.
Arlya wasn't listening to the wind, or the tree, or the world around her.
She was listening to the Deep Flame itself.
---
In the days that followed, the Hollow Tree became a sanctuary—and a forge.
Allies began to arrive. First came the Windriders from the north, their eyes storm-gray and sharp as knives. Then the Mist-Clan walked out of the fog, silent and spectral as ever, with their blades curved and silver-tipped. A few scattered remnants of the Starborn mages arrived days later, bearing news far worse than expected.
Villages were vanishing.
Not destroyed—erased. Fields turned barren overnight. Rivers forgot how to flow. People disappeared without a single memory left behind, not even in their loved ones.
"The Forgotten Sea is leaking into the world," Laziel said grimly. "And it's rewriting us."
He had assembled a new war map in the Hollow Tree's council chamber. The markings had changed. No longer battle positions or troop counts—now it charted memory scars. Places where time frayed, where songs no longer remembered their endings, where names were unspoken because they had been stolen.
Seren stared at it in silence.
Kael leaned over her shoulder. "This wasn't a war. It was a summons."
"She wanted to die here," Virea said from the far wall, arms crossed. "She wanted us distracted."
Seren nodded. "Because something bigger is waking."
Arlya walked in, bare feet leaving faint prints of ember behind. "She wasn't alone," she said softly. "She was only the voice. Not the hand."
"Then what's the hand?" Kael asked.
Arlya looked up. Her eyes were the stars.
"The sea. And what sleeps beneath it."
---
That night, the stars refused to shine.
The Hollow Tree cast strange shadows over the field, its roots now visibly pulsing with inner light. The flame it held deep within had shifted—burning not with warmth but with urgency, as though the very core of the world sensed what was coming.
Seren walked among the warriors. Some slept in curled clusters. Others sharpened blades or sang soft laments to those lost.
She found herself staring into the tree's great roots.
It spoke to her, in a voice that wasn't quite sound. A presence.
It remembers.
It fears.
Kael came to stand beside her, as he always did.
"I saw things during the battle," he said quietly. "Visions of dying kingdoms. Of you… crowned in shadow."
"I saw them too," she whispered. "I think Nyssara showed us what we could become."
"Or what we must prevent."
Seren turned to him. "What if I lose control?"
"Then we hold you steady," Kael said simply. "You don't stand alone. Not anymore."
---
Far from the Hollow Tree, on a jagged shore none dared name, a woman stood atop the cliff.
Her skin shimmered with black scales. Her hair was a veil of smoke. Around her coiled a living serpent made of bone and flame, hissing softly in a language older than the wind.
She watched the stars shift—watched them bend into new constellations, forming a pattern once forbidden.
"She succeeded," the woman said.
The serpent whispered, "The Flame has chosen a girl."
"Yes. And so I will break her."
She raised her arm, and the serpent stretched toward the sky, its hollow mouth widening in silent invocation.
The ocean roared. Beneath the waves, something stirred—ancient, endless, and angry.
The Hollow Tree shuddered, even across the world.
Arlya sat up from sleep and whispered only one word: "She's here."
---
At dawn, Seren summoned the war council again.
More had arrived overnight—riders from the Glass Hills, whisper-priests from the Vale, and two broken survivors from the Southern Spine who claimed to have seen entire cities fall asleep and never wake again.
Arlya stood behind Seren now, quiet but radiant.
"We cannot wait for them to reach us," Seren said. "Whatever stirs beneath the sea, we must meet it before it erases more of our world."
"And if we don't find it in time?" asked one of the Glass riders.
"Then we write ourselves into fire," Arlya said. "Better to burn with memory than vanish without it."
---
And so the march began.
From the Hollow Tree, the united remnants of the fractured kingdoms took their first steps toward the Forgotten Sea. They moved in silence. They moved in shadow. Some carried swords. Others carried names—names they repeated constantly, so they would not be lost.
Seren rode at the front.
Kael by her side.
Arlya walked behind them barefoot, her flame untouched by dust or fatigue.
Somewhere far ahead, the sea waited.
And beneath it, something without name or form opened its eyes for the first time in centuries.
Seren felt it, deep inside her bones.
Not death.
Not destruction.
Unmaking.
They would reach the edge of the map soon.
And after that… only firelight would remember they ever existed.