The girl's name was Elara.
Kaelen saw it in fragments, flashes of memories, carried in the core essence that now swam through his blood like a second soul. The dungeon had not wanted to let her go. Neither had she. Some piece of her had chosen to stay, to bind herself to the stone and the teeth and the hunger, and that piece had found its way into him.
He dreamed her life.
---
Elara had lived in a world like this one, but not quite.
The sky had been the same blue. The snow had been the same cold. But the mana had moved differently, thicker, slower, like honey instead of water. People had called it the Age of Weeping, because the rifts had opened then, and the world had bled.
Her father had been a rift-walker.
