Torian crouched low as the wind picked up along the ridge.
The sky ahead was still silver with morning haze, but the ground beneath him cracked and dry—endless miles of wind-cut plateaus and low, thorn-covered hills that stretched southward in waves of lifeless stone.
He took one last glance back at the village behind them—just a shadow tucked into the cliffs now. No more whispers. No more watchers. The last thing the librarian had said still echoed in his mind:
"It has no name. It remembers them all."
⸻
Torian turned to Skarn.
"You ready?"
Skarn lowered his wings, gave a short snort, and crouched to the ground.
Torian stepped back, sprinted forward, and leapt.
Skarn caught him mid-air, powerful legs driving into the rock as his wings snapped wide. The ground crumbled under the force of his launch. A heartbeat later, they were airborne.
The world fell away beneath them.
⸻
The air was cooler above the cliffs. It swept across Torian's face as they climbed higher and higher until the hills were nothing but ripples in a grey-brown sea. His cloak flared behind him, the sword on his back strapped tight against the wind.
Skarn flew smooth and strong, his massive wings pushing with steady, quiet rhythm. Every now and then he tilted, gliding low over canyons, then climbing again. He flew like a creature born from storm and sky.
Torian looked down at the world below.
Dead forests. Cracked stone. Dry rivers that snaked like veins through scorched plains.
Not a soul in sight.
Not even animals.
Just distance.
And purpose.
⸻
They flew for hours.
The land never stopped shifting—rolling ridges gave way to sunken valleys, then back to pale grasslands that looked alive from above but turned skeletal when flown over.
Torian didn't speak.
Skarn didn't grunt.
There was no need.
They both felt it: the pull.
Not from behind.
But ahead.
⸻
By midday, the clouds began to gather in the distance.
Thin wisps at first.
Then thicker—massed like storm fronts along the southern horizon, stretching for hundreds of miles. The sun dimmed. The wind sharpened.
Below them, the terrain changed again—no longer just dead, but warped.
Stone twisted into unnatural curves. Trees curled like claws, as if recoiling from something unseen. Great gashes in the earth glowed faintly with silver-green shimmer, like ancient wounds refusing to close.
Torian narrowed his eyes.
"Something happened here."
Skarn tilted slightly in response.
A question, not a protest.
Torian just said, "Keep going."
⸻
Late afternoon brought the first signs of life.
Smoke.
Thin trails rising from a break in the hills, far below—just three or four narrow streams, spaced apart, fading quickly in the wind.
A settlement.
Tiny.
Distant.
Forgotten.
⸻
Torian tapped Skarn's shoulder.
"Down."
Skarn circled once, then descended—gliding low between jagged stone ridges, wings folding gradually until they dropped into the valley like shadows falling from the sky.
The village came into view.
Barely two dozen structures—round huts made from hardened mud and straw, clustered around a crooked well. No walls. No guards. Just dust and wind and a thin haze of fading heat.
Skarn landed in the center of the village with a heavy thud that shook the ground.
Torian slid off his back, landing lightly.
And everything changed.
⸻
The people screamed.
Children dropped their tools and ran.
Doors slammed shut.
A woman yelled something in a foreign tongue and grabbed a boy by the arm, dragging him into the shadows.
By the time Torian took his third step, the entire village had vanished into itself.
He stood in the square—alone, watched only by slits between shutters and the cracks beneath warped doorframes.
Even the air seemed to hold its breath.
⸻
Torian looked around.
No one came.
No one spoke.
Even Skarn's claws clicking against the packed dirt sounded louder than they should have.
Torian stepped forward and raised his voice—not loud, just steady.
"I'm not here to hurt anyone. I need information."
No answer.
Just the groan of a swinging sign above an abandoned stall.
He took another step.
"I'm looking for the purple forest."
That changed things.
A small sound came from the shadows.
A creak.
Then a door opened just an inch.
A gaunt man peeked through—a farmer, face weathered like baked stone, eyes wide and sunken.
"The forest?" the man rasped. "You mean the place where the gods don't go?"
Torian stepped closer. "I need to find it."
The man shook his head quickly. "No. No. You don't go there. No one does. It eats those who try."
"I wasn't asking permission."
The man flinched, but something in Torian's voice stilled him.
He looked down.
Then pointed toward the south.
"Far. South. Always south. Past the dead lands. Past the carved valley. It's real, but it's wrong. And it's waking up."
Torian frowned. "What do you mean waking?"
The man looked up, lips trembling.
"Because of you."
⸻
Behind them, another voice cut through the wind.
"It's not because of him."
An old man stepped out of a wide, round hut near the edge of the square. He moved slowly, leaning heavily on a walking staff carved with rings and symbols.
The librarian.
Torian turned toward him.
"You know of it?"
"I know what's left of the stories," the librarian said. "The purple forest lies two thousand miles south. At the edge of the world. It is said to be the first place this world ever knew magic. And the last place it ever wanted it."
He stepped closer.
"Some say it still breathes. That it remembers every bearer who ever touched this land. Every flame. Every false god."
Torian looked him in the eyes.
"Can it send me home?"
The librarian didn't answer immediately.
Then finally: "If there's a place that can… it would be there."
⸻
Torian nodded once.
Turned.
And stepped toward Skarn.
Behind him, the librarian said:
"Flame-bearer…"
Torian stopped.
"…you're not the first to go looking for it."
"I'll be the first to return."
Then he leapt onto Skarn's back.
The beast spread his wings with a deep crack of wind.
And they rose into the air—dirt and ash swirling in their wake.
The villagers watched from behind cracked doors.
And in the distance, clouds churned across the southern sky.
They flew hard into the wind.
The sun had begun to dip behind a haze of distant clouds, its light stretched thin across the sky like fraying cloth. Below them, the land warped further with every mile. It no longer felt like they were flying over terrain—it felt like they were flying over a memory the world was trying to forget.
Skarn's wings beat with steady force, slicing through the air as he carried them higher, then lower, adjusting as needed. He moved not just with strength, but with instinct—as if something below unsettled even him.
Torian sat hunched on his back, cloak pressed tight to his armor by the wind. His eyes scanned the land, hand resting on the hilt across his shoulder.
They passed over blackened forests, where the trees curled inward like claws, their branches strangling each other in still-life agony. Then fields of cracked obsidian, where ancient fires had melted the world and frozen it again in jagged, unnatural patterns.
Then—carvings.
Vast ones.
Not words, not art. Just marks scorched into the earth so large they could only be seen from the air. Spirals.
Hundreds of them.
Burned into the ground in perfect arcs—so old they were half-covered by dust and erosion. But still visible.
Still watching.
⸻
Torian leaned low over Skarn's neck.
"I think this world was torn apart by flame long before I ever got here."
Skarn gave a soft, guttural rumble in agreement.
Below them, a canyon opened wide—its walls sheer, straight, and black as oil. The river that once carved it was gone. Dried. Evaporated.
Yet it still felt wet.
Breathing.
Torian tapped Skarn's shoulder.
They banked left, avoiding the canyon mouth.
⸻
For another hour, they flew in near silence.
Only the whistle of wind, the hum of old heat rising from the ground, and the slow, rhythmic beat of Skarn's wings.
Then—a shadow moved below.
Torian saw it only for a second.
A shift in the obsidian fields.
Not a beast.
Not a shape.
Just the land itself flexing.
Like something had stirred beneath a layer of skin.
He didn't speak.
Didn't ask Skarn to turn.
Just reached for the hilt of his sword.
Skarn felt it too—his shoulders tensing, wings lifting in defense.
But the movement didn't return.
⸻
By dusk, they reached the rim of a cracked mountain range, its teeth stretching across the horizon like the shattered bones of something ancient. The peaks weren't tall, but sharp. Unclimbable by foot. Too unstable to fly directly through.
So they searched for a landing.
Torian scanned the cliffs for anything resembling shelter.
And then he saw it.
A faint trail of smoke.
⸻
Skarn descended cautiously, spiraling down toward a shelf of rock at the mountain's edge. As they landed, Torian dismounted and crouched low, hand ready on his blade, watching the curling smoke rise from behind a ridge.
They approached on foot—quiet, careful.
What they found wasn't a camp.
Or a fire.
It was a signal.
Old.
A ring of coals and stacked stones marked in spiral shapes, long cooled. Around it, twelve black stones were placed in a perfect ring.
Each with a spiral etched at its center.
Each cracked in the same exact way—split from top to bottom.
Torian stared at them, breath shallow.
"Another circle," he whispered.
"Another failed gathering."
⸻
He sat down in the center, legs crossed, letting the heat of the coals seep into his palms.
They were cold.
Dead.
But not forgotten.
He looked up at Skarn.
"This forest isn't at the end of the world," he said.
Skarn tilted his head.
"It's underneath it."
⸻
That night, they didn't make a fire.
The stars above were twisted—no constellations Torian recognized. The moon was too far away. Too blue.
He sat with his back against Skarn's shoulder, cloak drawn tight.
And the wind whispered across the mountain like it was afraid to speak too loudly.
The morning came gray.
There was no sunrise, only a slow shift from black to a dim, cloudy silver. As if the world had forgotten what it meant to glow.
Torian woke without having truly slept. His body was still, rested—but his mind hadn't stopped turning all night.
He stood from the cliff edge, eyes scanning the jagged mountain pass ahead.
Skarn stirred beside him and rose without a sound, wings folding close. Even the beast's breathing seemed more cautious here—less like an apex predator, more like something that didn't want to disturb the dirt.
⸻
They resumed their journey on foot.
Flying was dangerous in this wind—the currents here moved like they were trapped in a box, bouncing, spiraling. Not air, but pressure. Every now and then, a gust would whip around a corner and hit them from behind, smelling faintly of iron and rot.
The trail through the mountains was narrow and crumbling. Huge slabs of obsidian jutted out at odd angles, and every few feet a spiral had been scratched or burned into the stone walls. Some shallow. Some deep.
Some still smoldering.
Torian touched one and pulled his hand back.
Warm.
⸻
By midday, the air grew thick—not hot, just dense. Every breath felt heavier. The kind of weight you didn't feel in your lungs, but in your skull. Like thoughts were being slowed by some invisible hand.
Torian's spiral pulsed once.
Skarn's ears twitched sharply.
They stopped.
Ahead of them, the pass narrowed into a funnel of jagged black rock, and at the center of it was a single standing stone. No taller than Torian's waist. Perfectly smooth, polished like glass.
It had no markings.
No symbols.
Just a faint shimmer beneath the surface—like something trapped inside was blinking once every few seconds.
⸻
Torian approached.
His sword didn't glow.
But his chest did.
A faint spiral light pulsed beneath his skin, visible through his shirt, as if reacting to the stone.
He stopped a foot away.
The shimmer inside blinked again.
And then—
He couldn't move.
⸻
His feet rooted to the ground.
His muscles locked.
Eyes wide.
He wasn't in pain—but he was held, as if the world itself had grabbed his spine and whispered: not yet.
Skarn roared behind him, a sudden explosion of sound in the silence.
The hold broke.
Torian staggered back, gasping.
The light inside the stone vanished.
It was just a rock again.
But not forgotten.
⸻
He stared at it.
"Something's watching," he said, voice low. "And it doesn't want us here."
Skarn walked between him and the stone, body tense, fangs partially bared. But nothing else happened.
They moved on—faster now.
Neither of them wanted to linger.
⸻
By late afternoon, the land opened again.
The mountains gave way to a broken basin filled with dead trees and white dust. A place where nothing moved. Not wind. Not sound. Just open space and the faint smell of scorched metal.
And at the far end—nearly hidden by the slope of the land—stood a village.
No smoke.
No movement.
Just walls of old stone and roofs patched with iron.
Torian stopped.
Skarn did too.
Together they stared at it, both silent.
Because they'd seen villages before.
But this one…
It remembered them.
Somehow, before they'd ever set foot in it.
⸻
Torian slowly stepped forward, hand resting on the hilt across his back.
Skarn followed, wings half-unfolded, massive paws leaving faint imprints in the white dust.
The gates were open.
No guards.
No signs of life.
They passed through and entered the square.
And then—movement.
A single face appeared at a second-story window.
Then another.
Children peeking from cracked doors.
Men backing away slowly from alley shadows.
No one ran this time.
No one screamed.
But everyone stared.
At the spiral on his chest.
At the beast beside him.
At the sword on his back.
⸻
Then an old voice called from somewhere deeper in the town.
"Bring him."
A group of robed figures stepped into view, all wearing veils of thin black silk. None carried weapons. None spoke. But they moved like a wave—parting the path ahead of him.
Torian's jaw tightened.
Skarn lowered his head.
And together, they walked forward.
They were led through the winding streets in silence.
The robed figures never spoke, but their formation shifted constantly—two at Torian's sides, two ahead, two behind. Skarn followed without command, tail low, body tense. His eyes didn't stop moving.
This village wasn't abandoned.
It was waiting.
Each home had its shutters open just a crack. Eyes behind them. Watching. Children clung to elders. Whispers traveled faster than footsteps. The word flame was said again and again, in voices hushed as prayer.
Torian kept his head high but said nothing.
He could feel the spiral in his chest pulsing slowly—calm, but not quiet.
It remembered this place too.
⸻
They reached a wide stone platform near the center of the village. Ivy clung to its edges, though no plants grew nearby. At its center sat a figure cloaked in layers of faded crimson robes, their face hidden behind a spiral-marked veil.
The robed guides stopped.
The air shifted.
Torian stepped forward alone.
The figure raised a hand—not a command, but a greeting.
"You are the one the forest feared would return," the voice said—feminine, old, and steady as stone.
Torian's hand hovered near his sword. "I came here by force. I want to go home."
The figure lowered her hand. "The forest does not care what you want."
Skarn snarled softly behind him.
Torian stepped closer. "Then tell me how to reach it."
⸻
The seer did not move.
But her words pierced like arrows.
"You've been walking through graves."
Torian didn't flinch.
"The spiral flame once reached this land," she continued. "And once… it burned a hole through the sky."
He frowned. "When?"
"Before memory. After myth. There was one like you—flame in his veins, fury in his breath. He came here with strength, seeking mastery. But his flame turned on him. He scorched the world so deeply that this soil will never bear fire again."
She leaned forward, veil fluttering slightly.
"So we buried the spiral flame. And all who carried it."
⸻
Torian's eyes narrowed. "You killed them?"
"We stopped them," she said. "Before they could become what you might."
He said nothing.
She raised her hand again and pointed south.
"The forest lies two thousand miles beyond this point. It grows in colors not seen by mortal eyes. Its roots stretch through time. And it remembers."
Torian looked her in the eye.
"I'm not him."
"No," she whispered. "But your flame is."
⸻
The wind shifted again.
Dry.
Hot.
Torian turned and walked back toward Skarn.
But as he reached his side, the seer called one last time:
"Your presence woke it."
He stopped.
"The forest sleeps until it senses power. Your coming… has stirred it. Whatever it held back, it may not hold much longer."
Torian's grip tightened on the hilt of his sword.
Then he mounted Skarn.
The beast launched into the air.
The village shrank behind them.
The spiral blazed softly in Torian's chest—not with anger.
With certainty.
⸻
He wasn't afraid of the forest.
But it was afraid of him.