The old map Torren carried had cracked in the cold, the ink bleeding like veins over brittle hide. What little it still showed bore no resemblance to what stretched before them now.
The road had split—quite literally—into three paths. None of them were marked. All of them reeked of ruin.
Evelyn stood at the edge of the crossroads, wind tearing at her cloak, the horizon ahead rippling with heat and dust. The ridgelines to the west bore the broken silhouettes of once-sheltering trees. The eastern valley pulsed with faint blue glimmers—Echoed spoor, perhaps. The southern trail simply vanished into shadowed canyons.
Torren crouched, brushing his fingers across the dirt. He grunted. "No fresh tracks. Just old ones. Faint. Maybe days old."
Evelyn didn't answer immediately. Her eyes were closed, her palm hovering over her chest where her core beat in silence.
Something had changed since the vault. The ember's memory lingered. Her senses were sharper. Or stranger.
"West," she murmured. "There's something alive that way."
Torren frowned. "Alive like… a person? Or alive like an Echoed ready to flay us?"
She opened her eyes. "Both, maybe."
He stood, face unreadable. "Then we go west."
They walked through the bones of what might once have been a farming commune. Crooked windmills stood like mourning totems. Wards, broken and rusted, were mounted on half-fallen posts. Beneath their feet, ash and grit shifted with every step, threatening to swallow prints whole.
It wasn't until they reached the stone well in the center of the ruins that Evelyn felt it again—that same tug at the edge of her awareness. Like fingers brushing through her thoughts. Like a voice clearing its throat behind her skull.
The core inside her pulsed. Once.
She reached for the well's edge and looked down.
Nothing.
But she knew.
"They buried something here," she whispered.
Torren looked around. "No fresh graves."
"Not a body."
Her hand hovered above the stone lip. "A core."
He stepped back. "Echoed?"
She shook her head. "Dormant."
Then, faintly—almost inaudible—a whisper: "Lanthari…"
She froze. "Did you hear—?"
"No," Torren said. "What was it?"
But Evelyn didn't answer. Because the word wasn't meant for him.
It was her mother's voice. Or something shaped like it.
They dug beneath the wellstone.
Torren worked with his dagger, Evelyn with her hands. The dirt was dry, brittle, and thin. It peeled away in flakes and shards. Beneath it, less than a meter down, Evelyn's fingers struck metal.
A canister. Sealed, warded, and humming softly.
Torren drew back instinctively. "That's a binding seal."
Evelyn nodded. "Old Guild work. Pre-Fall. Maybe older."
She placed her palm to the top. Felt the warmth push back. It recognized her.
The glyphs lit up. Slowly. One by one.
The seal broke with a whisper.
Inside, wrapped in violet cloth and oilskin, was a single core. Small. Burnt. Cracked through its center—but still pulsing.
It sang when she touched it.
They didn't speak for hours after that.
The sun dipped. Shadows grew long. The wind began to wail through the broken windmills like voices grieving for a lost harvest.
They camped just outside the ruins, firelight small and shielded.
Evelyn stared at the core she'd taken from the canister. It sat on a piece of cloth before her, humming faintly. The crack down its center glowed like an old scar reopened.
Torren finally broke the silence. "It's speaking to you, isn't it."
Evelyn nodded. "I think it remembers her."
"Your mother?"
She nodded again, but slower this time. "Or… something before her. I don't think she was the first to find this. I think she was part of something much older."
Torren leaned forward, elbows on knees. "You think the Guild knew?"
"I think they lied," Evelyn said. "To all of us. About what cores really are. About where they come from. This one... it isn't empty. It's listening. And it's afraid."
Silence stretched between them. The fire popped softly.
Then, Torren asked the question neither of them wanted to voice.
"If the cores remember… what happens when they start to speak back?"
Later, as Evelyn tried to sleep, she felt it again—the whisper beneath her heartbeat. The subtle shift of something moving within her awareness.
But this time, it wasn't her mother's voice. Nor the flame's.
It was her own.
"Lanthari…" she murmured again, and this time, the word felt like a key in her mouth.
She dreamed of burning skies. Of children without eyes. Of songs sung in a language that bled.
And in the center of it all, a gate made of ribs and stone and fire.
Waiting.