They made camp near dusk beneath a natural alcove of blackstone, its ceiling carved by wind and time into patterns too fluid to be coincidence. The path had narrowed into a basin surrounded by jagged hills—broken earth that whispered of old ruptures and buried things best forgotten. The fire they built sputtered with gray smoke, dry wood too green, heat barely enough to warm aching fingers.
Evelyn sat close to the edge of the flame, the shard nestled within her core pulsing faintly. Not light this time, nor heat, but memory. Each beat dredged up images: Torren, bloodied and grinning during sparring matches; her mother's quiet words by lamplight; the scent of burning marrowwood from the festival ovens.
The silence around them wasn't just quiet. It was too clean. Hollow.
The child, Nima, had spoken for the first time earlier that afternoon, just one word—"Watcher"—while pointing toward a distant ridge. Vareth had looked sharply then but said nothing.
Now, the little girl hummed again. A different song this time. Minor-keyed. Old.
Torren glanced up from where he whittled a length of branch into a crude splint. "Where'd she learn that one?"
Evelyn didn't know. But something about the tune made her teeth ache.
Vareth emerged from the shadows near the ridge. His cloak had gathered frost near the hem, dusted in bone and dust both. He knelt beside the fire and reached into his satchel, drawing forth a folded cloth. Inside it lay smooth, flat stones—each etched with a single rune.
"Place these around the perimeter," he said quietly, handing half to Evelyn.
"What are they?" she asked, turning one over. It radiated warmth, like it had been lying in sunlight all day, though no sun had touched this basin since morning.
"Signal stones," he replied. "Old border wards. Markers from before the collapse. They don't repel Echoed, but they record presence."
"Record how?" Torren asked.
Vareth pointed to the faint spiral on the back of each stone. "They hum when something passes nearby. If that hum deepens, it means whatever came close… was listening."
Evelyn felt the core respond to that word—listening. Like a thought pressed close to her eardrum.
Together they placed the stones, embedding each into cracks in the rock or pinning them with shards of bone. When she touched the third, Evelyn gasped.
Her vision tilted.
Flash—
… A memory not her own. A Warden standing on this very path. Hood thrown back, voice hoarse, stones clutched in both hands as an Echoed beast stalked from the hills.
"You will not pass," the Warden whispered. "You will not pass…"
And then flame.
So much flame.
—Return.
She staggered back, breath hitching.
"You saw it, didn't you?" Vareth's voice, soft.
Evelyn nodded. "It remembers. This place."
"This path was once a stand," he said. "The Wardens lit heartfire here during the Scouring. It held the line for six nights."
Torren squinted toward the ridge. "Held against what?"
Vareth didn't answer.
That night, they slept close together, backs to the rock, weapons within reach.
Evelyn tried not to dream.
But the shard pulled her inward anyway.
She stood again in the carved basin, but the fire was brighter, spectral, dancing across the sky in threads of amber. Around her, hundreds of figures stood—some in Warden armor, others in patchwork robes.
They weren't fighting.
They were chanting.
At the center of the circle, a single woman stood—silver-eyed, cloaked in living flame, hair ash-white.
She looked at Evelyn.
And smiled.
"Child of core and bone," she whispered, "you walk the ember trail."
Evelyn tried to speak, but the words caught. "Who… are you?"
The woman raised a finger. Pointed to the sky.
A second sun burned above, small but impossibly bright. A shard, Evelyn knew instinctively. Not hers. Not now. But once part of the same whole.
Then the woman said something in a language Evelyn didn't know. The words curled inside her skull like vines, blooming pain and clarity together.
"You are not yet broken enough to understand," the woman said, softer now. "But soon. The stones will show you. As they showed me."
And she was gone.
Evelyn woke to cold air and a humming sound.
Not the tune from Nima.
Not a beast.
The stones.
All of them.
A slow, resonant thrumming, like breath trapped in stone lungs.
Vareth was already awake, blade drawn. Torren cursed softly, grabbing his spear.
"They're listening," Vareth said.
The stones deepened.
Three tones, layered.
One close.
One far.
And one… beneath them.
Torren turned, scanning. "We need to move."
But Evelyn stayed frozen.
Because the shard inside her had begun to hum in reply.
Not fear.
Not warning.
Recognition.