The river sang like a blade against bone.
Kael did not know why that was the first thought that came to him as he stood on the moss-slick stones and stared at the water, black as spilled ink under the twin moons. The Mark beneath his skin throbbed with a cold ache, and every whisper of the current seemed to shape itself into words he could almost understand.
—Kael…
He flinched. The voice was not the river. It was older.
"Do you hear it?" Serah's breath fogged the night, silver against the dark. She had kept pace with him in silence since the Veilwood, eyes like stormlight, jaw set with the stubborn courage she mistook for calm. "The ferryman said the Stones of Veyra remember. They keep memories."
"Stones don't remember," Kael said, though a part of him—an unwelcome, widening part—knew he was lying.
At the water's edge lay the first of the Stones: a circle of glossy obsidian half-swallowed by roots, each carved with names worn thin by centuries. Serah crouched, tracing one with gloved fingers. "Forgotten by men," she murmured. "But not by the Rift."
The word fell between them like a prayer and a curse.
He closed his eyes, letting the Mark unfurl. Shadows bled from his skin and gathered, threads of dusk weaving into a lattice only he could see—a map of absence overlaying the world. The Stones flared within that lattice, pulsing with muffled grief. A thousand lives. A thousand endings.
—Open, the voice urged. Remember what they would not.
When he touched the nearest Stone, the river's song broke into a scream.
He was no longer on the bank. He was in a cramped hut lit by guttering candles, a woman clutching a child as the door splintered. Armor glinted. The sigil of the Inquisition burned like a sun. "Shadowborn," someone spat, and the world smelled of oil and iron and fear.
Kael tore his hand free. The vision snapped. He stumbled, bile bitter on his tongue.
Serah caught his elbow. "What did you see?"
"History," he said hoarsely. "A massacre hidden under a river's lullaby."
She swallowed. "We shouldn't stay."
"We can't leave," Kael said. "Not yet."
Because beneath the horror was a pattern. A trail of names—each Stone a waypoint, each memory a warning—leading north, toward the old monastery that the Inquisition had razed but never truly abandoned. The Rift's hunger tugged from that direction, thin and keening.
A lantern bobbed on the opposite bank. The ferryman, a bent man whose eyes reflected more moon than they took, raised a hand. "Storm coming," he croaked. "River remembers storms worst of all."
Kael's Mark shivered. The shadow-lattice rippled, and in it he saw figures moving along the north ridge—robes, blades, a white fire cupped in gloved palms. Inquisitors. Already on the path he needed.
"We'll follow the Stones," Kael said. "We'll get there first."
Serah's chin lifted. "And if we don't?"
He looked at the water, at the reflections of the twin moons breaking like coins on black glass. "Then we make them remember us."
The first thunder rolled, low and grudging. Kael stepped onto the ferry, the wood creaking beneath his boots. As the ferryman pushed off, the river's voice crowded back in, a thousand whispers threading his name with others: Lysa, Tharn, Mirel, Ky—
—Help us, they whispered. Or forgive us.
Kael gripped the railing until his knuckles whitened. He had no forgiveness to spare. Not for the Inquisition. Not for himself.
By the time the ferry scraped the far shore, the storm was licking the horizon and the scent of rain braided with the scent of old ash. The Stones watched, patient as graves.
They would give up their dead. He would take their truth.
And if the Inquisition stood in his way—
The Mark smiled under his skin.
He smiled back.