Seven steps from broken light,
One shall wake, and none shall fight.
Two shall sleep where stars once sang,
Their tears to bloom the ashwood fang.
Three shall run and not return,
Fire in hand, and none to burn.
Four will lie and call it true,
Shadows bloom where no one knew.
Five shall fall and five shall rise,
Bound in blood, and sealed by lies.
Six shall sing the Bell's first tone,
Alone, alone, alone, alone.
But when the seventh stands unbound,
The world shall turn without a sound.
— Children's verse, origin unknown
⸻
Time broke.
Not violently. Not all at once.
Not like a sword splitting flesh—but like a thread pulled too thin, until it simply ceased to hold.
Casamir floated in that break.
Unmoored. Between pulses. Between places.
Light curled around him, soft and strange—like the breath of forgotten stars.
His world—Karnox—drifted behind like the memory of a scream.
He was not dreaming. Not truly.
But around him, dreams stirred.
He saw a battlefield he never escaped, its sky cracked open with fire and metal.
He saw cities he never reached—towers of glass buried beneath ash, faces blurred by smoke.
He saw people who might've been friends—if the world had allowed such things.
A girl with a hollow laugh and wire-threaded hands.
A boy whose coat flared with sparks every time he ran.
A child who carried a lantern into the dark and never came back.
And he saw himself.
Just a boy—soot-faced, sharp-eyed, crouched behind a telescope stitched from scrap, aiming it at skies that never held stars.
"Let me see," he'd whispered once, younger, fiercer. "Just once. Let me reach beyond what they said I'd never touch."
Then came the voice.
Not near. Not far. Not male. Not female.
It simply was—as if stone had finally learned to speak after listening for centuries.
And as it spoke, the scent of iron and rain stirred.
Not real—but remembered.
The smell of a storm that never fell on Karnox.
"You who walked among ashes… now walk among stars."
And he fell.
Through smoke. Through silence.
Through something brighter than light.
⸻
The stars caught him.
He drifted through them, weightless, held like a story not yet told.
There was no pain here. No gravity. No time.
Only breath. Only memory.
Only something vast moving behind the constellations—too old to be a god, too soft to be a shadow.
"You are far from where you began, little flame."
The words shimmered through his chest. Casamir turned—searching—but the presence wasn't something he could see.
"Who's there?" he asked. His voice felt younger in this place. Raw.
"No one you know. Not yet. Perhaps… someone you will remember."
He blinked, confused. "Where am I? Did I—did I die?"
A breath of dry amusement rippled through the starlight.
"Not yet. Though your world did try. You stepped beyond its end—carried by something you never lost."
"…Hope?"
"No," the voice replied gently. "Wonder.
Even as the sky burned, you asked why.
Even when the world ended, you reached out."
He fell quiet. The ache of it—the truth of it—lodged in his throat.
"You dreamed of oceans untouched by ash. Forests unsplit by war. Skies unbroken.
And even as your ground crumbled beneath you, you looked up."
"I dreamed," Casamir murmured, "because I couldn't live."
"And yet the stars opened for you."
Around him, constellations stirred.
Shapes formed—blurred—shifted.
A child cradling a broken spear.
A serpent devouring a moon.
A door made of wings.
A bell cracked down the center, weeping light.
They shimmered, then vanished—like frost melting in reverse.
"Not all doors open to power," the voice said. "Some open to longing."
Casamir's grip tightened.
The glowing map had returned to his hands—etched with constellations, veined with pulse-lines, alive.
One corner shimmered like fire reflected on water.
Another darkened, as if still mourning something unsaid.
He ran a finger along its edges. It felt like glass and skin. Like holding a thought that had waited too long.
"I don't understand."
"You will."
The stars pulsed once—like a heartbeat learning to beat again.
"The world you wake to is older than you know. Broken. Dreaming. And still dangerous.
But it has not forgotten how to listen."
Casamir drew in a breath. "Why me?"
The voice answered like gravity.
"Because you are still unfinished. You question everything. Even yourself.
You carry sin, and virtue—woven together in contradiction."
"You are a mirror, Casamir. For a world that has forgotten how to see itself."
He floated in silence.
Beneath him, the map pulsed like a quiet flame.
A trembling echo of something older than him—yet waiting for him all the same.
"…Will I be alone again?" he asked.
The words came soft. Fractured. Not from pride, but from memory.
"Only if you choose to be," the voice said. Then softer:
"But companionship is not the same as truth.
Not every enemy harms. Not every friend heals.
Some will twist your kindness. Others will feed your hunger."
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
A thought rose, unformed.
"I… I want to matter."
The voice paused—longer than before.
Something shifted in its tone. As if smiling through old sorrow.
"You already do. That is why this will hurt."
His throat tightened. "Will I find peace?"
The voice grew quieter now, as though it too were drifting away.
"That depends… on whether you find yourself."
⸻
The stars scattered.
Light returned—warm, low, golden.
A breeze rose from nowhere and curled through the void.
Ahead, on the far edge of silence, a line of dawn peeled back the dark.
"Wake now, child of ash and wonder," the voice whispered.
"You've crossed one end. Now begin the next."
⸻
He slept.
Breath returned. Weight returned.
Light spilled over him—morning light, gentle and alive.
Casamir dreamed he lay in a field of golden grass.
The sky above was vast, unmarred by war.
No cracks. No storms. No echoes of Karnox.
In his hand, the star map pulsed with quiet urgency.
He shifted slowly.
Alive. Still himself.
But something inside had changed.
Something he couldn't name.
Someone had spoken to him.
One who had once crossed the veil the same way.
One who had asked the same questions—and failed to answer them.
He held the map closer to his chest, as if to anchor the dream.
Its warmth lingered like breath on skin—alive, waiting.
In the distance, a whisper of birdsong stirred.
Not Karnox birds. Not machines.
Real ones. The kind that forgot how to scream.
And for a moment—just a breath—Casamir felt no hunger, no dread, no war.
Just wonder.
⸻
Far beyond that field—past time, past Thread, past silence—
there was a place untouched by any realm.
A sanctum of memory. Of dream. Of warning.
There, the Watcher watched.
He had no name anymore.
Only fragments. Only echoes.
Only the weight of what he had failed to change.
He watched the boy stir amongst the stars.
Casamir.
Burned by memory. Marked by contradiction.
Holding tight to the map as if afraid it would vanish like everything else.
"He arrives as I once did," the Watcher whispered.
"Full of longing. Full of light he doesn't yet know how to carry."
Relics drifted through the sanctum.
Forgotten weapons.
Abandoned prayers.
Shards of names that no longer had meaning but still bled when remembered.
"The world echoes through every age," the Watcher said. "But this one… this one holds its breath."
He stepped toward the veil, toward the vision.
"He does not know what he carries.
That he stands on the same ledge I once turned from.
That what follows will try to unmake him."
His gaze turned. And he saw them.
Not just Casamir.
The others.
Fractured. Frightened.
Virtuous. Dangerous.
Chosen. And not yet awakened.
One curled beneath earth. One tethered to flame.
One with ink on his fingers and pride in his eyes.
Each a flicker in a tapestry too vast to trace.
Each holding something the world had forgotten.
"They will not reach the end," he said, "unless they remember why they began."
The image of Casamir blurred—light bending around the boy's form as he stood, half-awake, staring up at a sky that finally held stars.
The Watcher raised one hand.
He held nothing.
No sword. No flame.
Only the shape of a name he no longer dared speak.
"Find her," he whispered. "She remembers what I forgot.
Through her, you may find yourself."
Then the vision faded.
The sanctum closed.
And he, once mortal, once lost—was silent once more.
Waiting.
Watching.
Still burning.