The knock came again — softer this time.
Ravine opened the door.
Maevan stood there, cloaked and hooded, droplets of rain sliding silently from his shoulders. He didn't speak, only offered a nod, then turned, already walking.
She followed.
Outside, the rain fell — not in sheets, not in mist. Just rain, the kind that had no emotion to offer. It simply was. Steady. Relentless. Honest.
Solmere Bastion rose behind her — high, weathered stone carved with ancient marks, its towers blurred in the mist.
It stood like a last breath caught between memory and ruin.
It wasn't a fortress in the centre of the world, or a capital brimming with life. No — it clung to the very edge of the Dead Zone, a scarred threshold where memory thinned and rain remembered more than people did.
Behind it, the five regions stretched into stories she couldn't yet touch. But here, at its broken edge, the Dead Zone began — a place neither dead nor truly alive. A wound the Bastion had learned to live beside.
She had never stepped beyond the gates before. Never felt the weight of the rain without a roof to filter it. Never looked at the fog and thought: I came from there.
But this time, Ravine did not watch from a window.
She walked into it.
They said nothing as they crossed the perimeter — that invisible line where colour drained from the trees and silence became a presence. The world grew muted. Green faded into greys, and the bark of trees took on a charcoal hue. Moss glistened unnaturally, and the mist swirled low, ankle-deep, like breath trapped in a nightmare.
She remembered this fog. She did not remember why.
Maevan stopped, then gestured.
"This is where we found you."
She stepped closer.
The ground was uneven, darkened with memory. A hollow in the earth, long since collapsed and filled with rain, roots, and time. It looked like the scar had tried to close. Nature was trying to forget. But something still lingered.
Her pendant — the Bloom — pulsed once beneath her cloak. She pressed her fingers to it.
"I was here," she whispered. "All of me, and none of me."
The rain kissed her face.
She turned to Maevan.
"Could I see the others?"
His gaze shifted — just slightly — but he nodded. Then turned again, guiding her back through the forest's narrow paths, skirting twisted roots and low branches. The Dead Zone receded, and the air began to change. Greener. Not brighter. But… alive.
Solmere Bastion loomed in the distance. Not quite a city, not quite a fortress. A haven carved from survival and knowledge. Ravine always thought of it as a heart held together by scar tissue.
But Maevan didn't lead her toward the gates.
He took a path she hadn't seen before.
Past a grove of ash blossoms — shrubs with blue-veined leaves and petals that opened only in rain — they came to a clearing.
Here, the rain felt different. Softer, though no less constant. The droplets hummed on the leaves. The air was filled with the scent of wet soil, of iron, of time.
And there they were.
The graves.
Six stones. Carved from pale basalt. Arranged in a single row beneath a natural arch of flowering vines. Each headstone etched with different glyphs, some faintly glowing under the touch of rain — each one uniquely designed, as if the artisans had tried to guess at who these people once were, and gave them beauty as apology.
Ravine stepped closer.
No names. Only the record aliases etched with care:
Eryn. Kaesa. Niva. Lysa. Maelon. Tovin.
Six names.
Six questions.
She reached into her satchel and unfolded the registry again. She sat down slowly at the foot of the middle stone — Niva's.
The rain blurred the ink on the page as she looked at the faces again.
"I don't know which one of you I was," she said aloud. "Or if I was even any of you at all."
No answer.
Only rain.
She lowered her umbrella, letting it fall to the side. Rain touched her hair, her shoulders, her skin.
"I'm tired," she murmured. "Of wondering, of waking up with a name that doesn't feel like mine. Of seeing faces that almost feel familiar."
Her fingers curled into the soft moss below.
"What if I was never meant to wake up?"
Silence.
The wind stirred.
She looked up at the stones, at the flowers growing between them. The petals swayed gently, as if listening. As if holding their own kind of breath.
"I don't know if I should keep searching… or stop and just make peace with not knowing."
Her voice broke on the last words.
Then — a sudden, sharp flutter of wings.
Ravine turned.
A crow stood atop the farthest gravestone — Maelon's.
Its feathers were deep as ink, glistening in the rain.
It stared at her. Unmoving. Watching.
Then, with a loud cry, it leapt into the air and flew — straight into the eastern sky, where the trees thickened and the fog rose again.
She stood, heart thudding. Watched the bird disappear.
Was it a sign?
She didn't know.
But she wanted it to be.
Ravine looked down at the stones, then whispered: "I think I'll go. Just a little further."
The Bloom around her neck pulsed again — warm this time.
She gathered the registry, picked up the umbrella, and turned toward the path the crow had taken.
Maevan waited in the distance. He hadn't followed her to the graves. He had given her space. But now he stood, waiting, rain pouring quietly around him.
She walked toward him.
Behind her, the stones remained — quiet, eternal — and the rain did not stop.
But for the first time, she didn't feel quite so lost.