The elves remembered everything.
That was their curse.
In the western forests of Malan, where ancient trees grew in patterns no human settlement could decode, time moved differently. Seasons overlapped. Light lingered longer than it should. Even silence carried residue.
Within a hall grown rather than built, an elven council convened without announcement. No summons were sent. None were needed.
They had felt it.
Not wind.
Guilt.
"The records are shifting," said an elder whose hair had long since turned silver-white, though her face remained unlined. "Not physically. Interpretively."
"That should be impossible," another replied. "The Covenant sealed those histories."
"Yes," she said. "They sealed words. Not memory."
A crystalline surface hovered between them, reflecting fragments of old treaties—pacts between races written after the last great convergence. Dragons had signed with presence. Demons with clauses.
Elves had signed with silence.
"That silence bought us peace," one councilor said defensively.
"It bought us survival," another corrected. "At the cost of truth."
A younger elf stepped forward, eyes dark with unease. "The wind patterns have changed. The forests feel… permissive."
Several elders stiffened.
"Do not speak that name," one warned.
"I didn't," the younger elf replied. "But the world is."
Silence followed.
Elves were not warriors by nature. They were archivists of continuity, caretakers of balance. When Gale Aerindel had risen, they had known what he represented—a human who broke inheritance itself.
They had also known what the other kings would do.
"And we let it happen," the elder said quietly.
No one argued.
They remembered the meeting beneath a sky still undecided, the moment when the Wind King had been named a destabilizing force. The elven delegation had voted for abstention.
Not approval.
Not resistance.
Abstention.
"We told ourselves neutrality was wisdom," the elder continued. "That survival justified silence."
Her gaze lowered to the shifting crystal. "But neutrality is a decision. And the world remembers decisions."
A tremor passed through the hall—not from magic, but from recognition. Leaves rustled without wind. Roots adjusted their grip beneath the soil.
"He walks again," the younger elf said softly. "Not as he was."
"That may be worse," another murmured. "He does not demand recognition."
"Then what do we do?" someone asked.
The elder closed her eyes.
"For now," she said, "we regret."
The word carried weight among elves. Regret was not passive. It was preparation—the acknowledgment that a future choice would come due.
"If the wind is remembered," she continued, "then our silence will be remembered too."
Far from the forest, Vale felt a faint ache—not pain, not warning. A pressure behind the eyes, like being recalled by someone who had failed to speak when it mattered.
He did not know why.
But the trees, miles away, leaned subtly toward his path.
And in their shade, an ancient race finally admitted what it had lost by choosing to endure instead of act.