The air was colder than it had any business being. Ashen could feel it creeping into his bones as they traversed the final stretch of trail before dark.
The road curved into a clearing that was ringed with towering pines. In the middle was one building — not a house, not really a ruin. Four stone walls that were crumbling, no door, no roof. Something that could have been a shrine.
Galen paused. "This. did not exist before.".
Ashen scanned the clearing. "And how do you know where 'here' is, then?"
Galen did not answer. His gaze had wandered off.
Among the debris, the earth was covered in shattered fragments of stone. As night began to fall, Ashen noticed delicate etchings carved into their faces. Letters. Words. He knelt and cleared away the moss.
The script was his. Not similar — not a coincidence. His own looping handwriting.
The first part he unveiled was:
".do not believe in gaps."
A chill went up his spine. He shifted to a different rock.
"You will forget this."
Galen's voice cut through the silence. "Ashen. Step back from that."
Ashen disregarded him, drawing out another piece of the wreckage. This one was denser, the marks more distinct, as though in a hurry:
"On the twelfth, you broke the Chronicle."
He froze. The twelfth. The blank page.
His pulse pounding in his ears, he spun to confront Galen. "What do you know about this?"
Galen's face was unreadable. "I have said it to you already, certain things are not recalled."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you'll get."
Before Ashen could speak another word, the wind shifted. A noise—first nearly silent—started to echo through the trees, sounding like the deep moan of some very old creature. The ground trembled beneath their feet.
From the other side of the clearing, a shadow crept into the ruin, claiming the last of the light with it. It stuck to the stones like ink on water, and in its blackness, Ashen imagined he saw forms — faces he didn't know but somehow recognized.
One of them was mouthing a word.
"Return."
The notebook in his bag heated up, hot as if it were going to burn him, against his back. He pulled it out, but when he opened it, the pages were out of order — jumbled, lines deleted, notes he remembered writing ripped out.
And in the middle, where there had once been a white page, there was text now in that same crazy handwriting as the stones:
"If you continue on this path, you won't return."
The shadow moved forward. Galen grabbed his arm. "We have to go. Now."
"but—"
"No time!" Ashen stumbled as they sprinted, the ruins fading into the distance. The chill remained, so did the voice behind him among the trees, creeping closer with every step. "You have been here before."
END OF VOLUME 1