The forest was wrong here.
The trees still stood, but their bark was blackened, and weeping sap like blood. Roots coiled over one another like old bones refusing to be buried. And the air—the air smelled like memory and iron.
Kael pushed through the underbrush in silence, the ghost of adrenaline still crackling through his limbs. His mind lingered on the figure at Ashbone Crossing—the Rogue Flame. The precision of her attack. The stillness in her stance.
She hadn't killed him.She'd just cut off his path.
Deliberate.
He couldn't explain why, but the moment she'd looked at him, something inside him had twisted. Not in fear. Not anger.
Recognition.
[Environmental designation: The Scarred Hollow.]System Sync: Stabilizing.Proximity to Relic Imprint detected. Emotional resonance: High.
Kael stopped beside a sunken clearing—more a crater than a grove. Stone pillars, half-swallowed by vines, ringed the space like old teeth. One had collapsed inward, revealing a jagged spiral of roots and ruined steps disappearing below.
At the center lay a single object:
A silver pendant, cracked down the middle.
He approached slowly, pulse tightening. His fingers brushed the chain.
And the world tilted sideways.
[MEMORY IMPRINT – UNSTABLE THREAD DETECTED]
A girl stood in the snow.
Cloaked in red. A staff strapped to her back. She was yelling at someone—Kael couldn't hear the words, but her hands were trembling and her eyes were shining with rage and grief. She looked older than him. Or maybe younger. It was hard to tell.
And he—
He was there.
Or a version of him.
This Kael—this past Kael—stood like stone. Silent. Covered in blood. Watching her walk away.
The pendant dropped from her hand.
And she never looked back.
Kael snapped awake with a gasp.
The pendant was gone. Disintegrated into ash. But the feeling remained.
A name clawed at the back of his throat.
"…Lyra."
He didn't know why it hurt to say. Only that it did.
[Memory Thread Unlocked: Lyra (Redacted). Sync: 21%.]Relic Imprint absorbed. Emotional variance: Elevated. Recommend grounding.
Kael ignored the prompt.
Instead, he turned.
Because someone was standing at the edge of the hollow.
The same figure. Cloaked. Staff on her back. Face still hidden—but something in the curve of her stance, the way her weight shifted ever so slightly—Kael knew.
She'd been watching him.
"You," he said quietly.
The Rogue Flame didn't move.
Didn't speak.
Then, she nodded once.
And vanished into the trees.
Kael didn't follow. Couldn't. Not yet.
His legs were shaking. Not from fear.
But from hope. And the weight of a name he didn't know, he remembered.
New Objective Unlocked:"Trace the Rogue Flame to the Hollow's Edge."System Status: Stabilized. Emotional anchor forming.Danger Level: Unknown.
Kael knelt beside the spot where the pendant had vanished.
There was no fire in his hands.
Only the echo of warmth.Of something he'd lost.And might just find again.