The scroll didn't tell him where to go.
It simply disappeared.
Burned away the moment Keiran closed his eyes.
And yet… by dusk, he found himself at the Vale.
The land just knew.
Graven Vale was dead.
Not the loud death of war or ruin—but a slow, aching kind. The kind that came when memory refused to fade.
Grass grew here, but it didn't sway.
Fog rolled here, but it didn't lift.
And the wind—what little there was—smelled of smoke that hadn't burned in years.
The path was marked only by rune-stones, half-sunken into soil, carved with names no longer spoken. The Concordium called this place a preserved anomaly site.
Locals called it cursed.
Keiran called it quiet.
He stepped between the markers, toward the broken chapel at the Vale's heart. Just as the Concordium's Mediator had whispered before vanishing:
"Deliver the item. Place it on the altar. Don't wait. Don't ask."
She hadn't said what it would do.
She didn't need to.
His mark throbbed the moment the chapel came into view.
The chapel was little more than a husk. Stone walls crumbling under the weight of moss and silence. A fractured dome overhead let moonlight spill through like silver rain.
And at the center: an altar made of black glass.
Cracked. Forgotten.
Waiting.
Keiran stepped forward.
He pulled the wrapped bundle from beneath his cloak—the obsidian sigil given to him in the Sanctum. The one the mark recognized.
The moment it touched the altar—
The chapel breathed.
Not wind.
Not air.
Memory.
He staggered.
The floor rippled.
The fog entered the chapel—no longer passive. It spun in a slow circle, forming shapes that twisted into people.
A woman knelt by the altar. Younger than him. Hooded. Whispering.
"He won't remember me."
"Good."
Then a second figure—her opposite in every way. Taller. Lean. A boy with a cracked medallion in his palm. His voice was a low chant.
"Name erased. Tether severed. Let the Solitude bear the weight."
Keiran tried to move. He couldn't.
The vision locked around him.
The girl turned. Her face was pale. Soft. Familiar.
Lys.
But younger.
Before the forgetting.
"When the moons return," she whispered, "I will light his name again."
Then—
Flames.
The altar cracked straight down the middle.
The vision shattered.
Keiran collapsed to his knees, gasping. The sigil was gone.
The altar glowed faintly. A rune etched where the sigil had burned through:
He didn't know the symbol.
But the mark on his wrist did.
It answered with heat—not in pain.
In recognition.
A new line etched itself along his scar—unbidden, spiraling like a candle wick.
A voice spoke behind him.
Not loud.
Not cruel.
Just… unfinished.
"He's starting to remember."
Keiran spun.
No one there.
But a single candle flickered on the altar's edge.
He hadn't lit it.
And yet, it burned.
Sideways.
As if it had always been burning. In both directions.
He stepped back, heart racing.
A gust of wind swept through the chapel.
The candle stayed lit.
But its flame changed shape—
A girl's silhouette, flickering in the wick.
She said no words.
Just held out her hand.
Then vanished.
Leaving only smoke.
And a single phrase seared into Keiran's thoughts like a whisper burned into time:
"I am still waiting."
Outside, the Vale was silent again.
But the grass moved this time.
And far behind him, something unseen began walking the path back toward the city.
Following his footprints.