Ashwood had never welcomed her, and it did not begin now.
Kael moved through the stone corridors in silence, her steps measured against the cold floor. The walls remained unchanged, the air just as heavy, the unseen watchfulness just as present as it had always been. Nothing here ever shifted.
The chamber doors opened before she reached them. The elders were already seated, waiting.
"You've returned," one of them said.
Kael stepped forward without hesitation. "Matt is dead."
The words settled into the room, followed by a silence that held.
"How?" another asked.
Kael let her gaze pass across them before answering. "He attacked, but he did not complete it. He died instead."
That drew their attention fully.
"Explain," the eldest said.
"There was no struggle," Kael replied. "No resistance. He made contact, and the human reacted."
A slight movement passed through the chamber.
"You're certain?" one of them asked.
"Yes. I saw the body. There were no signs of combat."
The silence that followed was longer this time, more deliberate.
"And the human?" the eldest asked.
"He does not understand what happened."
That answer was enough to shift the room.
A brief exchange of looks passed between them.
"No," one said under his breath.
"We erased it," another added.
Kael's eyes narrowed. "What was erased?"
The atmosphere changed. The silence that followed carried weight beyond the present moment.
The eldest leaned back, his expression distant. "When the war began, we believed it would end as it always had."
Flames consumed Amalos, spreading through the city without restraint. Buildings collapsed under the heat, and smoke choked the night sky.
Kael stood in the middle of it, not as she was now, but as she had been then,faster, sharper, untouched by hesitation.
Vampires moved through the streets with precision. Humans fell quickly, and for a time, victory seemed inevitable.
Then the pattern broke. The humans stopped running. They held their ground.
Behind them stood figures cloaked in dark fabric, unmoving and silent.
The air shifted first, growing dense and unnatural. Even then, Kael recognized the change, though she did not yet understand it.
They chanted in a different tongue, rising in unison.
The ground trembled.
For the first time, the vampires faltered. It lasted only a moment, but it was enough.
The witches raised their hands as one, directing their voices toward something unseen.
Then a response came,not from the sky and not from the earth, but from somewhere deeper.
The fire twisted against its natural movement. Shadows bent into forms that did not belong to the night. Even the strongest among them hesitated.
Then the vampires began to fall, not from wounds or exhaustion, but from a force they could not resist.
It touched them, and they collapsed without struggle.
There was no blood, no sound only absence where they had stood.
Kael felt it then, a reaction that had nothing to do with fear as humans understood it.
She could not see it clearly, even now. Only the distortion it left behind, and the way everything around it seemed to bend.
"We had already begun to lose," the elder's voice carried through the memory.
Kael understood it in that moment. The war had ended before they accepted it.
The memory shifted.
The fire was gone, replaced by silence.
Kael walked through what remained of Amalos. The city was broken, emptied of life, stripped of everything it had once been.
There were no bodies, no signs of the battle. She searched anyway.
"Timon."
The name left her quietly.
No answer came.
She searched every street, every ruin, every shadow, but he was nowhere to be found. Not among the fallen, not hidden.
Simply gone.
That was when she understood. They had not only lost the city. They had lost something they could not recover.
Ashwood returned.
The chamber came back into focus, the elders watching her closely.
"It ended the war," one said.
"It forced us out," another added.
Kael remained still. "And that force?"
"It was erased forever," one replied.
"We made sure of it," another confirmed.
Kael studied them, reading the slight hesitation they did not voice.
"Then why does this feel familiar?" she asked.
No one answered immediately.
The eldest leaned forward. "You said it came from the human."
"Yes."
A pause followed.
"That should not be possible," one of them said.
"No," the eldest agreed quietly. "It should not."
Silence settled again. Then the decision came.
"Find him."
The tone left no room for interpretation.
"If what you witnessed is real," the eldest continued, "then this is not coincidence."
Another pause.
"It is something that endured."
Kael turned without another word. The doors opened, then closed behind her.
Ashwood fell silent once more.
But this time, the silence felt different.
Far from it, unaware of what had been set in motion, Eryndor stood at the edge of a truth he did not understand. And if it surfaced again, no one would be prepared.