The forge had fallen silent, but the echoes hadn't.
Serai stood at the edge of the ruined pool, watching the ink settle into a cold, glassy stillness. Her skin smelled like smoke and old rage. Under her feet, the floor no longer burned—it pulsed, like a dying heartbeat struggling to remember rhythm.
They had won. Or at least, survived.
"Do you think she's really gone?" she asked without turning.
Kai sat a few feet away, legs crossed, blade resting beside him like a tired dog. His hands were shaking just enough to give him away. He didn't answer immediately.
"No," he said eventually. "But maybe we're not haunted anymore."
Elio had disappeared into the far alcove of the temple ruins, chasing some residual pulse of magic. Serai wasn't sure if he was scouting—or avoiding. Either way, she let him go. Everyone heals differently.
Her eyes slid to Kai.
He was the one she couldn't stop watching.
He had changed in that forge. She'd seen it—the moment his blade flared with light, when he'd faced down his memory like a king walking into fire. There was something sovereign about him now. Something that didn't beg for forgiveness anymore.
He looked up suddenly, catching her staring.
"You okay?"
"No."
"Good. Me neither."
They both smiled—tired, sarcastic things that barely held.
He stood and crossed to her, close enough that she could feel the tension still living in his shoulders.
"Serai…"
She turned her face slightly toward him. "Don't say it."
"Say what?"
"Whatever version of 'I'm sorry' you've been saving for the right moment."
He hesitated. Then nodded. "Okay. I won't say it."
A beat passed.
"But for the record…"
"Ugh—Kai—"
"I was going to say… thank you."
Serai blinked.
"…For what?"
"For choosing me. When it wasn't easy."
That silenced her.
Not because she hadn't expected gratitude—but because deep down, she hadn't believed he noticed. That he saw the way she'd fought the shadow not for glory or righteousness, but for him.
"I didn't save you," she said, voice lower. "You saved yourself."
"And that's the only reason I can stand here and thank you."
She hated how warm her chest felt. How safe.
She also hated how quickly that warmth faded when Elio came rushing back in, breathless.
"We've got a problem."
They both stiffened.
"Elaborate," Kai said sharply.
Elio's eyes were wide. "The forge didn't just hold our memories—it was holding something else back. Something old. Something that feeds on memory."
A hush fell.
Serai felt the floor vibrate beneath her boots again.
"I thought the forge was built to trap the shadow," she whispered.
Elio shook his head. "It was built to trap the thing that made the shadow."
They all stared at each other, realization dawning like a second sunrise.
The forge wasn't a battlefield. It had been a lock.
And they had just turned the key.
Kai didn't speak again for a while.
He stood beside Serai as Elio paced like a man possessed, his hands slicing through the air as he explained sigils, seals, ancient locks, and memory-bound spirits none of them had ever heard of. His voice shook, but not from fear—he was thrilled. That was worse.
"You mean to tell me," Serai finally interrupted, "we just set free something worse than the shadow?"
"Yes," Elio said without hesitation.
Kai dragged a hand over his face. "Perfect."
"The forge wasn't a tomb. It was a prison." Elio was in full obsession mode now. "And every battle we fought inside it? Every nightmare it dredged up? That was just its appetizer."
Serai felt the ground tremble again. No, not the ground. Her blood. It was recognizing something. Echoing something. Like the way your bones remember a scream long after the noise has died.
Kai stepped in front of her, instinctive. Protective. Damn him.
"I'm not breakable," she muttered.
"I know," he said. "But I've seen the way you bleed."
She stared at him.
His voice was too soft, too full of the memory of her wounds and the way he had stitched them back—awkwardly, with trembling hands and burning prayers.
Elio shoved a cracked tablet into Kai's hands. "We need to go east. There's a second forge. Or maybe a sister site. Something that might help us fix this."
"Fix?" Serai scoffed. "We can barely stand."
"We don't have time to recover," Elio snapped. "The seal is broken. If we wait too long, that thing will come looking for us."
Kai's jaw tightened. "Then we move."
Serai looked at both of them—her madness and her mercy. One brilliant, frantic, and doomed. The other broken, burning, and loyal. And her, in between. Always in between.
"Fine," she said. "But if this ends with the world ending—again—you owe me dinner first."
A few hours later, the three of them were walking down what used to be an ancient rail path—now cracked stone, crawling ivy, and bones of machines that hadn't moved in centuries.
No one spoke for a while.
The silence wasn't awkward.
It was loaded.
Every step toward the eastern edge of Ilyor—the part that hadn't dissolved into ash and star-rain—felt like a step toward something watching. The trees seemed taller now. Less like plants, more like guardians.
Serai adjusted her pack. "This road isn't on any of the maps."
"That's because it wasn't meant to be found," Elio muttered, brushing moss off a rusted mile marker. "But she must've known we'd come here eventually."
"She?" Kai asked.
Elio didn't look up. "Anelle."
Serai's spine went ice-cold.
Not because of fear. Because of the truth inside the name. It stuck to your ribs when you said it out loud.
"She's gone," Kai said.
"Is she?" Elio turned. "What if this was part of the design? What if we're not running from her… what if we're being led?"
Serai frowned. "By a dead dreamer?"
"By what's left of her," Elio said. "Memories echo, Serai. You know that better than any of us."
Kai's fingers brushed against hers for the second time in twenty minutes. By accident. Probably. Maybe.
She didn't pull away.
Didn't look at him either.
Instead, she whispered, "We're getting close, aren't we?"
Kai nodded. "I can feel it."
The wind shifted.
Carrying something ancient—scented like rain on burnt stone, like fire that remembered names.
Then the path widened. The trees parted.
And there it was.
A second forge.
This one untouched.
Still sealed.
Still… breathing?
It pulsed in the earth like a heartbeat.
A warning.
A welcome.
Or both.