The forest was quiet again. Too quiet.
Haco's boots sank into the damp leaves, each step muffled by moss. The faint salt smell of the sea clung to the wind; somewhere behind him, their campfire still burned low. He didn't look back.
"I knew you'd show yourself," he said.
A shadow peeled away from the trees. Nakea stepped out, her crimson eyes catching the light like a blade edge. She folded her arms, a half-smile tugging at her lips.
"You're too obvious, Haco. Wandering off alone like that. Still babysitting them, I see."
He exhaled softly. "It's not babysitting."
Nakea tilted her head, the moonlight tracing a red line down her hair. "Always clinging to promises you can't keep. Always watching over children that can never match—"
"Don't."
The single word cut the air between them. For a heartbeat, there was nothing but the hush of wind through branches. It wasn't the silence of enemies, but of people who once stood back to back and knew what it cost.
Her smile faded first. "Do what you like," she said quietly. "But the world doesn't wait for them to catch up."
Her shape dissolved into the trees again, leaving only the faint stir of air where she'd been. Haco stood there for a long while, his gaze unfocused. Then he turned back toward camp, his tails trailing faint light behind him before vanishing under the cloak.
By dawn, the fire was little more than ash and orange glow. None of them had truly slept. Mira sat poking the coals with a stick; Kael stared into the fog that crawled along the ground. Elira's eyes were distant, fixed somewhere past the trees.
Mira finally spoke. "We could go back. Just… check on Rho. Make sure she's all right."
Kael shook his head, slow and certain. "Even if we did, what then? We can't do anything yet. It'd just drag danger with us."
Elira didn't answer right away. Her throat tightened. Rho's face—the last time she saw her—flashed in her mind. That smile felt like a lifetime ago.
Then Haco stretched, yawning like it was any other morning. "You want to go?" he said lightly. "Go ahead. You'll just come back empty-handed."
That earned him a glare from Mira. "You're heartless."
"Efficient," he corrected, still smirking. "The answers aren't back there. They're ahead."
Elira hesitated. "Haco… where did they face him? My parents. Vaelis."
For a moment he only watched the fog threading the trees. Then, quietly: "A place called the Phantasmal Sanctum. A shrine where the world runs thin. That's where your parents stood against him—fourteen years ago."
"Phantasmal… Sanctum?" Mira frowned. "Never in any guild charts."
"It wouldn't be," Haco said. "Maps lost it on purpose. Records, too. But the ground remembers."
Kael folded his arms. "We already know he's our enemy. What we don't get is—he's human. Third Order. Why did the hero's party fight one of their own?"
Haco's gaze slid past them, somewhere far beyond the trees. "Because being human isn't the same as standing with humans. Fourteen years back, at the Sanctum, he crossed a line most people don't even see."
"What line?" Elira asked.
"The kind you can't uncross," Haco said. "I'll show you when we get there. Words won't land until the ground is under your feet."
Silence pressed in, thick as the mist. Elira felt the question burning anyway. "Then what did he do?"
Haco's hand stilled on his cloak. "He taught shadows how to wear faith," he said at last. "And made good people swing their blades for the wrong reasons."
The answer didn't ease anything. It only made the path feel narrower.
Mira breathed out. "So we go to the Sanctum."
"We do," Haco said. "Fourteen years is a long time. But places like that don't forget."
Elira rose, fingers closing around Lumeveil's hilt. The forest held its breath. "Then that's where we start."
Haco nodded once, already turning into the trees. "Keep close. The road ahead knows our names."
They set out under the pale gray of morning, the air still heavy with dew. The forest closed around them in tall pillars of damp bark and whispering leaves. Every few steps, a tangle of roots or a half-buried stone marked where an old road might once have been.
Mira broke the silence first. "So that's it? No more clues, no rest, just walking straight into another cursed ruin?"
Haco smiled faintly, that half-lazy grin returning. "You wanted adventure, didn't you?"
Kael snorted. "You call this adventure?"
"Better than sitting still."
Elira's hand rested on Lumeveil's hilt, the blade faintly warm against her palm. "Then let's move. The answers won't wait forever."
Haco gave a short nod. "Good."
He stepped ahead, pushing through the curtain of fog. The others followed, their shadows long and sharp in the dim light, stretching over the tangled roots and fading path.
Behind them, the forest whispered like it knew their names—and in the distance, somewhere past the mist, the ruins of the Phantasmal Sanctum waited, breathing faintly beneath the earth.