The wind changed.
It was colder here, damp with rot and memory. Kael moved through a narrow pass, cliffs pressing in on either side like teeth. The trees had long since burned away, but something still grew from the soil.
Bone.
Fused into the rocks. Half-buried under moss. The ribcage of some ancient beast jutted from the earth beside the path, towering over him like a warning. This was no battlefield.
It was a graveyard.
[Location: Seraph Vale.]Environmental hazard: High Ether saturation. Cognitive distortion likely.System Alert: Proceed with focus. Do not speak to the dead.
Kael slowed.
"Do not speak to the dead" was not the kind of instruction that usually preceded a peaceful walk.
The Vale widened into a basin where the air shimmered strangely, heatless, colorless, like breath caught between worlds. In the distance stood a monument of broken stone and obsidian metal, overgrown with vines. Its shape was impossible—spiraling upward and inward at the same time, bending space as if it remembered being divine.
Warning: Proximity to Remnant Site detected.Origin: Unregistered. Dormant.Probability of contact: 7%... 18%... 31%...
Kael kept walking.
Each step felt heavier, not in muscle, but in memory. Like he was dragging not just his own past, but others'. The System's voice dimmed, its guidance flickering in and out.
…pRoceed to– …SyNc unStabl—–chooSEN–…
Then silence.
Kael stopped breathing for a moment. Not from fear, but from something stranger. Recognition.
He was being watched.
Not by people.
By time itself.
A whisper slipped through the trees.
"Why did you leave us?"
Kael turned.
Nothing.
Then again:
"You promised you'd never burn alone."
He stepped back. "Who's there?"
A figure emerged from the mist.
Familiar. Younger than him. Brown eyes like dying firelight. Skin marred by fresh burn scars. A boy.
No. A memory.
Kael took a shaky breath. "Are you an Echo?"
The boy tilted his head. His voice was barely more than a breath:
"I was your brother. Once. Or maybe your general. Maybe your son. It blurs, doesn't it?"
Kael's mouth was dry. "This isn't real."
"Is anything?" the boy said, stepping closer. "You're made of echoes, too."
Kael reached for his fire, but it sputtered.
[Ember Sync: 18%. Combat Protocols: Interference Detected.]
The boy—ghost—looked up.
"You left us to drown in your fire. We followed you, Kael. We believed. And when the sky fell, you burned the path so brightly… we thought it meant you were still leading us."
His form began to glitch, face fragmenting between ten different expressions. Ten different lives.
"You were supposed to come back for us."
Kael stepped forward. "I don't know who you are. I don't know who I was. But if you were real—if we ever fought side by side—then I'm sorry. I'm trying."
"Trying?"The boy smiled, voice rising like a scream inside a whisper.
"Then why is HE waking up?"
The wind howled.
The Vale trembled.
Kael's heart nearly stopped.
Because across the basin, rising from the bones of a dead cathedral, a figure had begun to stir.
Not a ghost.Not a memory.
A presence.
Tall. Cloaked in scorched royal garb, face hidden beneath a cracked helm. At his waist: a broken crown. Not worn. Hung like a blade.
His aura was unbearable. A silence that pressed into the skull.
[Sleeping Heart #12: Crownshatter — Signal Detected.]System Status: REDACTED.Engagement Prohibited. Sync Required ≥ 40%.Recommendation: Retreat. Immediately.
The figure turned his head.
And Kael felt it.
A ripple.A pull.Not of hatred.But of recognition.
The ghost boy vanished. The mists scattered.
And Kael ran.
Not from fear.
But because somewhere inside him—beneath the fire, beneath the name—something had reached back.
And whispered:
"Father."