Ashling woke not with a scream—but with a name on her tongue.
It wasn't hers.
And it wasn't Keiran's.
It was one of his buried selves. One that hadn't been spoken since the Wars of Severance. A name burned into the root of memory and cast into silence.
"Vaelren."
It left her lips like a blade.
Lys jolted upright. The fire had died, but the air still flickered with warmth—not heat, but presence.
Ashling clutched her head. "It's happening again."
Nyrelle knelt beside her, breath shallow. She didn't ask questions. She listened.
Ashling's voice dropped to a whisper. "He's… splintered inside me. I feel him like echoes trying to walk."
Lys reached for the memory-core. It pulsed once—then bled light from its seams.
Nyrelle recoiled.
"That's not a core anymore," she murmured. "It's becoming a mirror."
Ashling shivered. "A mirror of what?"
Nyrelle did not answer.
They left the ruin by dusk.
But Trenhal Hollow did not release them easily.
As they passed beneath the crooked remnants of a once-sacred archway, the fog thickened.
The path beyond shifted.
No longer stone. Not soil either.
A sigil-road had formed beneath their feet.
Carved not into the land—but into memory itself.
It glowed faint silver, shaped like the twin moons touching.
Lys crouched. "These roads were banned after the Severance."
Nyrelle said, "Banned, yes. But not broken."
Ashling's gaze followed the sigils. "Where does it go?"
Nyrelle's answer chilled the wind.
"To the place where he first remembered what they tried to make him forget."
They followed the road in silence.
The deeper they walked, the more the world fell out of sync.
Stars above moved backward.
Trees wept salt instead of dew.
And time, as Ashling described it, began to hum like an old song—familiar and wrong at once.
They reached a clearing.
At its center stood a stone figure—hooded, faceless, arms outstretched as though cradling an absence.
No inscription. No altar.
Only one phrase, burned into the earth in ash-charred script:
What is your way of life, Solituded One?
Ashling stepped forward as if in trance.
Lys grabbed her hand. "Don't answer it. This could be a Binding Point."
But Ashling spoke anyway.
"To give is to take.
To take is to carry.
To carry is to suffer.
To suffer is to see.
And to see… is to live."
The statue's hands cracked open.
Inside them? A nameplate, old and rusted.
Lys knelt beside it, brushing off soot.
It read:
VAELREN — Echo of Cycle 3. Kept. Not Lost. Bound to the Solituded One.
Ashling stumbled back, pale.
"It's one of his lives," she said. "One they tried to erase. But they couldn't."
Nyrelle looked grim. "They didn't erase it. They buried it. In you."
Far away, on the road behind them, footsteps echoed.
Not just one pair.
Two.
The black envoy had arrived.
Behind him walked a veiled figure in white, her silverbone scythe etched with vow-runes too old to translate.
Nyrelle turned, her eyes hardening. "We're out of time."
Lys whispered, "What are they?"
Nyrelle: "Hunters. Not of bodies. Of remnants."
Ashling blinked. "Then they're here for me."
"Not you," Nyrelle said. "Him."
The statue began to tremble. Dust poured from its joints.
The memory-core inside Ashling's satchel erupted in white-blue light.
It screamed, without voice.
And Lys saw something she was never meant to.
A field. A battlefield. Keiran—no, Vaelren—kneeling beside a burning sigil.
Crying.
Not from pain.
From clarity.
"They said I had too many names. But I only ever wanted one."
Behind him, seven shadows loomed. All bore the mark of the Crown of Ashes. All pointed toward him—not to curse.
To salute.
Lys gasped.
The vision shattered.
She fell to her knees.
Ashling was already on the ground, tears streaming, hands clawing at her chest as if trying to tear something loose from inside.
Nyrelle threw salts into the air and screamed an incantation of memory-stillness.
The sigil-road cracked.
The statue spoke.
"What is your way of life, Solituded One?"
Ashling answered again, her voice fused with something else—older, heavier:
"To give is to take.
To take is to owe.
To owe is to walk.
To walk is to wound.
To wound is to know.
And to know… is to live."
Then came the silence.
Not emptiness.
Anticipation.
The figure in white raised her scythe.
The black envoy's voice cut through the wind.
"Return the memory. Or we sever all."
Ashling rose slowly. Her voice? No longer just hers.
It echoed with Vaelren's cadence.
"You severed once. And you failed.
Now I remember.
And memory… is a weapon you cannot unmake."
The earth split.
The sigil-road shattered into seven spirals.
Each one pointed to a place tied to Sevrien's past.
The Concordium would now know this:
The Solituded One wasn't just remembering.
He was reclaiming.