The road bled into salt.
What was once dirt turned pale and dry, veins of white crust crackling beneath their feet like old parchment. Trees grew stunted here, hunched like cowards under a sky that never rained. Nothing chirped. Nothing howled.
The Ashwalker stopped at the ridge.
Below them sprawled a village — if it could still be called that. Twenty homes at most. Mud-brick, flat-roofed, baked dry by wind and sun. No smoke from chimneys. No footprints in the sand.
Just… stillness.
The girl tilted her head. "Is it abandoned?"
"No."
She narrowed her eyes. "Then where are they?"
He didn't answer.
They entered at dusk.
The village streets were too clean. Not in the way a swept home is clean — no. It was surgical. No litter. No dust. No blood. No sound of doors creaking shut or old men coughing behind curtains.
Just silence.
And the smell.
She caught it first — subtle, but wrong. Like copper and rot buried beneath lemon balm and dry spice.
She covered her nose. "What is that?"
"They're masking it," he said.
She looked around. "Where is everyone?"
He nodded toward the temple at the far end of the square — a squat structure of black stone and flaking murals.
"In there."
The door creaked when pushed.
Inside, they found thirty villagers kneeling in rows.
Not praying.
Staring.
Eyes wide open. Pupils like pinpricks. Lips cracked. Skin stretched tight over bones. Some were bleeding from the gums. Others had fingernails stained with soot and ash.
No one moved.
The girl whispered, "What the hell—?"
"They took the salt rite," he muttered.
"What's that?"
"A death vow."
One of the villagers blinked.
The others turned their heads in unison — like dolls being tilted by an unseen hand.
Then one of them, a gaunt woman with bruised elbows and a swollen neck, croaked:
"Do not break the circle."
The girl stepped back.
The woman's voice rasped again. "We are bound. Do not speak his name."
The Ashwalker stepped forward, ignoring the line of salt that had been drawn around the altar in a perfect ring.
Another man — older, with a missing ear and black fluid seeping from his nose — screamed.
"YOU'LL BRING HIM BACK!"
The Ashwalker looked at the mural on the wall behind them.
A crude painting of a figure — tall, eyeless, head crowned with bone antlers. One hand held a broken bell. The other, a scale dripping blood.
"Who drew this?" he asked.
The woman trembled. "He was here before the gods. He watches through the silence."
"Name?"
"NO," the room screamed in unison.
The girl flinched, hand on her dagger.
The Ashwalker kneeled at the edge of the salt ring.
"Then show me," he said.
The villagers began to hum.
Low. Broken. A sound made by people who hadn't used their throats in weeks. It shook the floorboards — not with volume, but with weight, like the air itself was being dragged into their mouths.
The girl stepped back. "What are they doing?"
The Ashwalker didn't blink.
"They're showing us what they swore never to tell."
And then the lights dimmed — not from flame, but from thought.
The room grew wrong. Angles no longer obeyed. The space behind the altar stretched, warped, and coiled inward like a tunnel opening inside the stone. Murals bled. Salt lines vibrated. One of the kneeling men coughed up dust.
The girl felt her knees shake. Her vision split, like someone had smeared oil over her eyes. She blinked — and saw something behind the altar.
Not a man.
Not a beast.
An absence.
A shape made of suggestion, its antlers brushing the ceiling, its chest hollow, yet breathing.
The woman who'd spoken first rose to her feet, bones creaking.
She extended her hand — not to the Ashwalker, but to the air.
"Judge of the unremembered," she whispered. "Bearer of the Balance Unseen. We call you not to rise, but to look upon us once more."
The Ashwalker gritted his teeth.
And stepped into the circle.
The salt hissed as his boots broke it. The temperature dropped like a blade to the spine. Several villagers collapsed at once — blood pouring from their eyes. The murals peeled away in sheets. Wind rushed in from nowhere.
The girl screamed, "Get out!"
But he didn't.
Instead, he reached toward the altar.
And placed something down.
A small object. Metallic. Dull silver, etched with names long erased by flame. A coin?
No — a medallion.
The moment it touched the stone, the vision cracked.
Like glass under heat.
The antlered shadow staggered, then folded inward, collapsing into a gust of ash that howled once — a scream not made for ears — before vanishing.
The murals fell. The salt line went still. The villagers collapsed, unconscious.
Silence returned.
But it wasn't empty anymore.
The girl rushed to him. "What the hell was that?!"
He didn't look at her.
Instead, he picked up the medallion, wiped the edge clean, and slipped it into his cloak.
"They tried to bind it."
"What was it?"
He looked at the altar.
"One of the old ones."
"Old like… gods?"
"No," he said. "Older."
She stared at the villagers — twitching in their sleep. "Are they going to wake up?"
"Eventually."
"And remember?"
"Only pieces. The salt rite burns the rest."
She folded her arms, trying not to shiver. "Why'd you step in? Why risk it?"
"Because I needed to know if they were just afraid…"
He paused.
"Or if they'd seen him too."
They left before the sun rose.
The girl kept looking back at the village, half-expecting it to crumble or catch fire or vanish like it had never existed.
But it didn't.
It just stayed there. Silent. Breathing.
"How did you know that thing wouldn't take you?" she finally asked.
The Ashwalker didn't respond.
She tried again. "That wasn't a god, was it?"
"No," he said.
"Then what?"
"A mistake."
She frowned. "That doesn't make sense."
"It's not meant to."
They walked another mile before he finally added, "Before the gods had names, the world was full of things like that. Forces. Hungers. They weren't evil. Just… wrong. Like leaving meat in the sun."
She hugged her arms tighter around herself. "And that thing back there?"
"Is one of the few that remember what we used to be."
That answer didn't comfort her.
They made camp beneath a dead tree — long stripped of bark, its limbs snapped into jagged claws.
The Ashwalker built the fire in silence. He didn't look tired. He never did. But something in his shoulders was heavier tonight.
The girl finally sat down across from him.
"That medallion," she said. "What is it?"
He didn't look up.
"Payment."
"For what?"
"Answers."
She frowned. "You bought that vision?"
"No," he said. "I gave it a memory. One I didn't need anymore."
Her voice dropped. "Whose?"
He didn't answer.
But he didn't need to.
She saw it in his eyes — that flicker of something gone.
Later, she whispered, "You said they'd seen him too."
He looked into the fire.
"The Pale Bishop wasn't the one who gave the order."
She nodded slowly. "Then who?"
A long silence.
Then, the first time he said the name aloud:
"Oron-Kael."
She repeated it. "Oron-Kael… What is he?"
The flames flickered — not from wind, but from the sound of it. Like the name itself had weight, dragging the fire sideways.
"Something born of a dead empire," the Ashwalker said. "He was meant to be a record. A judge."
"Meant to be?"
"He went further."
She leaned in. "Is he alive?"
The Ashwalker looked past her. Past the fire. Into the dark where stars should've been.
"He's listening."