The march toward the Forgotten Sea carved a wound across the land.
For days, Seren's army moved like ghosts — through forests that whispered in forgotten tongues, across rivers that no longer reflected their faces, and over fields where their own footprints vanished behind them. The world around them had begun to forget itself. Maps failed. The sky changed shape. Even time unraveled in their hands.
Seren felt the pull of the Hollow Flame growing heavier in her chest. It wasn't a gentle guide anymore — it was a fire pacing in a cage. Her dreams burned: visions of herself wearing a crown of thorns, eyes empty, standing over the ashes of a kingdom that no longer had a name. She heard the sea's voice in her sleep, calling her by a name only her soul recognized.
Arlya remained silent for most of the journey. She had stopped speaking in full sentences and now whispered to the wind. Her eyes shimmered constantly, not with magic, but with knowledge too old for words. Flowers still ignited under her steps. Kael rarely left Seren's side — not out of duty, but out of fear. He knew they were getting closer. And something was changing her.
On the sixth night, they reached Viremoor — a place no one had expected to find.
It had once been a lush, living valley, drowned centuries ago by rising tides. But now the waters had retreated, and what remained was a graveyard of bone-twisted trees, half-sunken towers, and black stones that jutted from the earth like broken teeth. A thick mist lay across the valley floor. The moon above flickered, as if uncertain it was supposed to be there.
Seren halted the column. The soldiers stood in uneasy silence.
"This place isn't on any map," Kael said, narrowing his eyes.
"It wouldn't be," Arlya whispered. "It's a hinge."
Seren turned. "A hinge?"
"Between what was and what will be," she replied. "Reality is soft here. Things slip through."
A sound rose on the wind — like distant weeping. Then silence. Then footsteps.
From the mist stepped a tall figure, veiled in smoke and shadow. No feet touched the ground. It moved as if gliding through memory.
"I am the Drowned Oracle," the figure said in a voice of wind and water. "And I have waited for you, Flamebearer."
The army held their breath.
Seren stepped forward, her voice calm. "Why?"
"Because you are the fire that remembers," said the Oracle. "And memory is the only thing the sea fears."
Without being asked, the Oracle lifted its veil — not physically, but emotionally. A wave of visions crashed through the minds of those who looked at it:
— A city falling beneath black waves, the screams of its people echoing beneath the water.
— A dragon frozen mid-flight, its wings sheared by wind made of silence.
— A crown, made of thorned gold and living flame, held aloft by a hand bleeding starlight.
— Seren herself, walking alone on an ocean that reflected nothing. Her eyes were flames. Her heart was ash.
Some soldiers fell to their knees, sobbing. Others turned away, unable to look. Three of them walked into the water without a word and never came back.
Arlya stepped forward next. "What lies beneath the sea?"
The Oracle didn't move. "Unmaking."
Kael's hand drifted to his sword. "What does that mean?"
The Oracle looked directly at Seren. "You are not walking toward war. You are walking toward forgetting. Toward the death of all things that ever dared to be."
Seren clenched her fists. "And if I turn back?"
"Then you will become a ghost in a world already erased."
Seren stared into the Oracle's face — and saw herself, but older. Weary. Alone. Drenched in black fire.
Then the Oracle vanished into mist, and with it, the silence returned.
---
That night, the camp burned with uneasy dreams.
Arlya sat awake by a fire that didn't cast light, her hands wrapped around a stone that pulsed like a heartbeat. Kael watched her from afar, whispering something to his blade as he sharpened it — not for enemies, but for memory itself.
Seren walked alone through the camp, unseen by most. Everyone had grown quieter. Eyes darted. Names were whispered more often now — not in conversation, but as mantras. The people had begun speaking their names into the air just to be sure the world still remembered them.
When she returned to her tent, she found a letter on her bedroll. It was unsigned. Written in a language she hadn't seen since she was a child.
It read:
> "You cannot crown yourself in fire without becoming the thing it burns. The sea waits. But so does the sky."
She crumpled it.
And yet she kept it.
---
By dawn, they reached the edge of the Forgotten Shore.
The land ended in a jagged cliff that once might've been beautiful. The sea stretched beyond them, black and still — not rippling, not breathing, as if the very idea of motion had died. The air smelled like forgotten prayers.
No birds flew overhead. No waves touched the shore. The horizon bled.
At the center of the black sea, something pulsed — a dull light beneath the water. It beat like a sleeping heart.
Arlya gasped.
Kael drew his blade without knowing why.
Seren dropped to her knees, her hands on the stone. The Hollow Flame inside her surged, screaming without sound. She heard the voice again — the one from her dreams. The one that had called her daughter.
But this time… it said something new.
"Come home."
---
Arlya stood at the edge of the cliff.
"We can't go around it," she said.
"No," Seren whispered, rising to her feet. "We go through."
Kael looked at her. "How?"
"We enter the sea. We wake what's beneath. We face it before it erases more of the world."
"That's suicide," Virea spat, stepping from the shadows.
"No," Seren said, her voice iron. "It's salvation. If we do not fight it here, it will drown the sky."
Silence fell again.
Then, behind them, the Hollow Tree — though leagues away — flared across the sky. A pillar of light reached upward, piercing the clouds.
The Flame had heard.
It had chosen.
And it was with her.
---
As night fell, preparations began.
They would descend into the sea at first light — not by ship, but by spell. Arlya would open a path using the Hollow Flame's memory to keep reality intact for a short time. Kael would lead the vanguard. Seren would enter last, carrying the Flame itself — her soul tethered to the root of all memory.
It would either burn the sea from within…
Or it would drown her.
She sat in silence, staring at the dying stars above.
Kael sat beside her, quietly.
"If we die," she said, "let it be for something real."
"If we live," he answered, "let it be together."
They said nothing more.
Because the sea was already listening.