The ground still trembled where the sigil-road had shattered.
Seven spirals burned into the forest floor, each pulsing like a heartbeat—seven paths, each leading to a memory buried so deeply the world had rewritten itself to forget them.
Ashling stood at the edge of the central spiral, breathing like someone trying not to drown.
She whispered, "He's louder now."
Nyrelle laid a trembling hand on her shoulder. "Which one?"
Ashling didn't blink.
"All of them."
Far above, clouds churned with ash and starlight. In the Warden Vaults of Avaris, a scribe's hand broke as he tried to transcribe the old codices of the Severance. The page bled—not ink, but a dark red sap.
The words would not hold.
Every time he rewrote Keiran's name, it shifted:
Vaelren
Sol-Keir
Ashbrand
Sevrien-Kaynar
The ink rebelled.
The memory of the boy could no longer be caged in a single name.
The page curled into flame.
Back in the Hollow, the veiled white figure lowered her scythe but did not attack.
Her voice came like wind over winter bones:
"He awakens too fast. His fragments are not ready."
"We will be ready," said the black envoy.
Ashling locked eyes with them, and for the first time… she didn't flinch.
"I'm not a vessel," she said. "I'm a witness. And the names you buried are bleeding out."
The white figure tilted her head.
"Then bleed with them."
She stepped back into her own shadow—and vanished.
The envoy followed.
Nyrelle collapsed in relief.
Lys exhaled. "They didn't fight."
"No," said Nyrelle. "They marked."
Ashling turned to her. "Marked?"
"Every spiral here is now bound to you," Nyrelle whispered. "Step into one, and you'll awaken what lies beneath. Not just memories."
"Fragments."
"Remnants."
Lys looked at Ashling. "And what if they fight back?"
Ashling's answer was soft. Resigned.
"Then maybe remembering isn't just becoming someone again.
Maybe it's surviving who you used to be."
That night, they camped inside the hollowed ribcage of an ancient tree.
Ashling couldn't sleep.
The memory-core now pulsed in rhythm with her heart.
Lys, half-asleep, mumbled, "Do you think he can hear us?"
Ashling: "He is us."
Lys: "That's the part I'm afraid of."
Far away, across oceans of black fog, in a city that had forgotten it once knew the stars by name—the children began to dream.
They all dreamed the same thing.
Twin moons crossing.
A boy with white eyes.
And a voice asking:
"What is your way of life?"
One child answered aloud in her sleep:
"To live is to choose."
"And I choose to remember."
The sky above the city fractured for a moment.
Only one person noticed: an old seer who had once held Keiran as an infant before his first name was stolen.
She wept.
Not in fear.
In relief.
Ashling stepped into the first spiral the next morning.
Lys protested. "We don't know what's on the other side."
Ashling's answer: "Neither does he."
The spiral lit up with old flame.
The forest blurred. Sound peeled away.
And Ashling stood in a ruined cathedral of mirrors—each one cracked, reflecting a different version of Keiran:
One wielded a staff of bone and truth.
One wore chains, humming lullabies in a dead language.
One had no eyes—just light.
One… was burning. And smiled at her.
The mirrors whispered in one voice:
"Which one of us will you carry?"
Ashling stepped toward the burning one.
He spoke without mouth, voice like coals ground into syllables.
"They called me Ashbrand. Cycle Four.
I was the one who said no."
"To what?"
"To redemption."
She reached for him.
He vanished.
A scar bloomed on her palm—a brand shaped like a flame curled inwards.
She staggered out of the spiral.
Lys caught her.
Nyrelle's eyes widened. "That's… one of the Remnants."
Ashling nodded, teeth clenched. "He's inside now."
Lys: "How do you feel?"
"Like I've just swallowed someone who remembers what dying means."
Elsewhere—in a vault beneath the Concordium's Sentinel Citadel, the Council gathered.
Six seats were filled.
One was empty. Again and this time they were all changed?
The Remnant Council's leader—Elyen Thorne, Master of Memorybinding—slammed a fist on the table.
"The Solituded One awakens too fast. We were supposed to control the spirals. Not lose them."
A younger Concordium Seer whispered, "He's remembering without us."
Thorne turned. "Then send the Wardens of Disjunction. We burn the spirals. We bind what we can."
The sixth Councilor—an old woman in silver glass armor—spoke calmly.
"And if he reaches the seventh spiral?"
Silence.
Then Thorne spoke the only truth they all feared:
"Then we no longer contain memory.
We are remembered by it."
Ashling sat beside the dying fire, the new scar on her hand glowing faintly.
She whispered a question, but not to anyone near.
"How many of you are there?"
From the core, a dozen voices whispered back.
"We are pieces."
"We are pain."
"We are the truths they threw into rivers and flames."
"We are Sevrien, the boy who bled to remember."
"We are Keiran, the one who still chooses silence."
"And we are Ashbrand… the one who burned rather than forget."
Ashling nodded.
Tears traced her cheeks.
Lys touched her shoulder. "What did he say?"
Ashling: "That to carry memory… is to carry flame."