"Not all ruins are built of stone. Some are made of promises too heavy to carry into the next life."
The Weeping Gate
Rain was not merely falling—it clung. Each drop a whisper, each whisper a name.
As Kaizen and Yvonne crossed the broken pass that once led to the kingdom of Haldria, the sky wept as though mourning its own memory. Wind howled not with fury, but with restraint—the kind only grief can teach.
The city's towering gate loomed ahead: weathered steel laced with vines of glass thorns, rusted over centuries. Runes etched along its frame glowed dimly in response to Yvonne's steps.
"We're being remembered," she whispered.
"By a city?" Kaizen muttered.
"By something deeper. Something that's been waiting."
The gates didn't swing open. They sighed—an aching sound, like lungs exhaling for the first time after centuries of silence.
Haldria, the Forgotten Heart
Haldria was not decayed. It was preserved in sorrow, perfectly embalmed by the Veil's design.
The cobblestone roads gleamed beneath the rain, reflecting lanternlight from windows where no one lived. Statues of saints stood covered in ivy and chains, their eyes downcast as if too ashamed to look skyward. Time itself refused to pass here—it lingered like a held breath.
"There's no rot," Kaizen observed. "No blood. No ruin. Just… absence."
Yvonne nodded slowly, lips trembling.
"Grief doesn't destroy everything. Sometimes it just… holds on."
The further they walked, the heavier it became—not the rain, but the air itself. Each step pulled memories from them like threads from old cloth.
Yvonne's fingers twitched. She heard a voice—not spoken aloud—but from within.
A child laughing.
A name she couldn't remember.
A promise she once made.
And failed to keep.
The Grave of Forgotten Names
The center of the city opened into a circular courtyard lined with obsidian tombstones—polished, untouched by time. Runes shimmered on them in the same spectral language found in ancient Spiral texts.
Yvonne approached one stone, her fingers brushing its cold surface.
Her own name was carved upon it.
Not "Yvonne."
But Ashweaver.
Kaizen found his, too—Kael'Vorr, etched below a crest shaped like a burning sword piercing through a crown.
"We died here," Kaizen whispered.
"No," Yvonne said, choking back tears. "We were buried here. By the ones who still believed in us."
The Keeper of Names
A voice rose through the rainfall—soft, deliberate, and mournfully melodic.
"You returned too soon."
From the mist emerged a woman wrapped in a tattered mourning cloak. Her face was hidden behind a mask of broken glass. Veil sigils spiraled across her arms like veins.
She was not mortal. Not spirit.
She was a Keeper—a living memory, constructed from the fourth Veil's sorrow.
"You shouldn't have come," she said. "Not before the fourth star was ready."
"We were called here," Yvonne answered, rain pouring from her lashes. "By the sorrow we didn't know we still carried."
"Then you will drown in it," the Keeper whispered, lifting one hand.
And the gravestones cracked open.
The Mourning Choir
From the graves emerged figures of mist and light, shaped like people, but lacking detail—except for their eyes. Their eyes were vivid, burning with pain and hope and betrayal.
They surrounded the twins, not to attack… but to grieve.
Each one bore a memory Yvonne had once suppressed.
A child she had saved, only to abandon.
A disciple of Kael'Vorr, who begged for guidance during the final war.
A mother whose son she incinerated in a moment of wrath.
A lover whose face she could no longer recall—but whose voice still whispered, "You said I was your world."
Kaizen clenched his fists, jaw trembling.
"They remember us," he said. "But not as we hoped."
"Because we never came back to say goodbye," Yvonne said, falling to her knees.
The Veil Breaks from Within
The figures didn't strike.
They wept.
Their tears pooled at the twins' feet, filling the courtyard in a shallow lake of memory. Every ripple carried an image: fire raining from the sky, a child clutching a sword too big for his hands, a temple crushed beneath divine rage.
"We failed them," Yvonne whispered.
"We forgot them," Kaizen answered.
"No," said the Keeper, her voice cracking with reverence. "You chose to forget. The Veils did not erase the pain. They sealed it… because you could no longer carry it."
Yvonne rose slowly.
Her eyes no longer burned. They glowed with sorrow.
"Then I carry it now."
She stepped into the water.
And embraced the nearest phantom.
The Rain Ceases
The ghost didn't vanish—it leaned into her, as if finally allowed to mourn.
And then it dissolved—not into nothing, but into Yvonne's chest.
One by one, the others followed.
Kaizen let the last figure, a boy who had once called him "father," collapse into his arms.
When the final ghost was gone, the Keeper bowed her head.
The rain stopped.
And for the first time in three hundred years, Haldria exhaled.
The Fourth Veil Cracks
The sky parted.
Above them, the fourth star—Sorrow's Star—burned red beside the others.
Yvonne clutched her chest as something inside her gave way.
Not shattered. Not broken.
Opened.
"This Veil… wasn't a cage," she said, tears still streaking her cheeks.
"It was a grave I forgot to visit."
Kaizen rested a hand on her shoulder.
"And now… we mourn as who we are."