The air shimmered, thin as gauze, between where the Emberwake Convergence had been and where Riley and Daphne now stood. The heat had not dissipated; it had simply moved inside them. The ring of flame, the warriors, Kaelira—they were gone, scattered like glowing seeds in the wind. The convergence had passed, but its mark remained, burned beneath the skin.
Beyond the valley, the Divide loomed.
It wasn't a cliff or a canyon. It wasn't even a place.
It was a feeling.
A border of memory.
One step across it, and the world stopped obeying its rules.
Riley tightened the straps of her pack and stood silent before it. From a distance, it looked like mist, a curtain of gray veined with emberlight, wavering as if the sky itself was trying to hold back breath.
Daphne stood beside her, arms crossed, gauntlet dim but warm. "You know what they said. Once we cross, the map resets. Time might not move the same. Or at all."
"We go anyway."
Daphne didn't argue. She never did when Riley spoke with that tone—flat, certain, edged in fire.
They crossed together.
The moment Riley stepped through the mist, she knew the world had changed.
The ground was solid, but every footfall left behind a brief pulse of light, like memories trying to echo back into form. Trees stretched overhead, their trunks thin and spiraled, branches like bones laced with burning veins. Everything shimmered faintly, as though time itself had been fractured into moments that bled into each other.
"It's beautiful," Daphne whispered. "And wrong."
Riley didn't answer. She was listening.
The Divide whispered. Not in words, but in sensation. She felt every second like a weight on her chest. One moment she was a child; the next, a commander. Then a shadow. Then light. Then flame.
She clutched the ember pendant around her neck—a gift from Kaelira—and breathed through it.
They moved forward.
The first echo came an hour in.
It looked like a man.
Until it didn't.
One moment he stood in the clearing, eyes hollow and distant, hands outstretched like a supplicant. The next, his skin split open and the ash poured out. A Skuldrith form cloaked in old memory.
Riley didn't hesitate. The flame leapt from her palm and devoured the creature, but not before its voice hissed through the clearing:
"You burn the past. But the past burns back."
Its ashes didn't settle.
They danced.
By the time they reached the ruins of Ashenveil, Riley had stopped trying to count the hours. The city was ancient, older than Nova Veil, older than the war, older perhaps than even the gods. Its buildings were low and round, carved from obsidian and glass, now broken and overgrown.
The center of the city held a tower. Half collapsed. Half intact.
Riley stared at it.
"That's the tower from my dreams," she said.
Daphne looked at her sharply. "Are you sure?"
"Yes."
And as they approached, the dreams became real.
Screams. Fire. A child crying.
Not Known.
But familiar.
Inside the tower, they found the archives.
Not paper. Not digital.
Memory.
Walls etched with moments—fragments of lives, battles, choices. Each one flickering when touched, replaying like holograms drawn in flame. Riley ran her fingers across a wall and watched an image leap to life: a young girl with eyes like hers, running through a burning village.
"She was Chosen," Riley said.
Daphne nodded. "Before you. Maybe before any of us."
And then the fire flared.
A new memory forced itself to the surface. A laboratory. A pair of linked pods. Two figures. A child and a scientist.
Their faces weren't clear.
But the bond was unmistakable.
The Soul Link.
"They did this before," Daphne murmured.
Riley turned to her. "We weren't the first."
The flames whispered.
"But we might be the last."
They stayed the night in the broken tower, a fire built between crumbling stones. Above them, the sky shimmered in unnatural hues. Riley couldn't sleep. The memories wouldn't let her.
She stood near the tower's edge and looked down at the cracked courtyard below.
A line of light now ran through it, pulsing slow, like a heartbeat.
The gate was opening.
But not for them.
Not yet.
Behind her, Daphne stirred.
"What do you see?"
Riley didn't look back.
"A choice. And a cost. And a fire that won't stay quiet."
The flames rose.
And the world breathed in.