The moon was high when Elira and Caelen departed the temple, the stars scattered above them like ancient eyes. They rode quietly along the ridge road, lanternlight casting golden halos around their mounts. Behind them, Aerthalin's sacred heart lay still. Before them, the path unraveled—unwritten, uncertain, and shadowed by the name of a village they had never seen, yet already feared.
Surn.
Elira rode with her cloak wrapped tight, the Weeping Blade sheathed at her hip. The curse hummed beneath her skin—not in pain, but in anticipation. Something ahead was waiting, watching. Not Eredan-Mir, but something born of the same silence. Something that fed on the absence of feeling.
Caelen broke the quiet first. "You've been silent."
She glanced at him, his face half-lit by the moon. "I'm trying to remember the names."
"The names?" he asked gently.
She nodded. "From the dream. From the garden. All those I thought I had saved… all the ones I thought I'd lost. I spoke their names into the illusion so they wouldn't fade. I don't want to lose them now."
Caelen's voice was quiet, reverent. "Then let's keep them. All of them."
She smiled faintly. "Do you remember the girl with the crooked braid? The one who gave me a blue ribbon and said her name was Serin?"
"I remember," Caelen said. "And the boy who carved your name into a stone and called you 'Kind Queen.'"
Elira laughed softly, the memory a small flame in the dark. "He said I made the wind feel gentle."
They rode on in silence, each name they spoke a thread anchoring the dream world to the real. Perhaps it hadn't all been illusion. Perhaps it had been Caelen's soul reaching hers—memory, mercy, and magic stitched into one long, aching message.
A message of what the world could become.
By dawn, they reached the outskirts of Surn. The village was nestled in a cradle of mist, its buildings hunched like sleeping animals. Yet something in the air felt wrong. Too still. Too cold.
A man greeted them at the gate—a worn figure with a healer's satchel and a sword strapped awkwardly at his side.
"You're the ones the temple sent?" he asked. His eyes held hope, but no ease.
"We are," Elira said. "Tell us what you've seen."
The man hesitated. "It began a month ago. One child. Then three. Then seven. They don't cry. Don't laugh. Don't flinch. They respond, but only barely. Like... something's missing."
"Pain," Caelen said grimly. "Or joy."
The man nodded. "Some say it's a blessing. But the elders remember the old stories. The ones you told."
Elira stepped off her horse. "Show me."
He led them to a small house near the river. Inside, the air was heavy. A woman knelt beside a crib, eyes rimmed red. Her baby stared upward, blinking, unmoving—even when Elira approached, even when she brushed her fingers gently across the child's brow.
She felt... nothing.
Not like in the illusion. Not even like the boy in the vision's Kareth.
This was hollowness. A body with a soul curled too deep inside to rise.
Elira looked up. "This isn't a child growing. This is a soul in stasis. Like something else is keeping it asleep."
The mother's voice broke. "Will she wake?"
Elira didn't lie. "I don't know. But I'll try."
Outside, Caelen stood by the riverbank, staring at his reflection in the rippling surface. "It's beginning again," he said as she joined him. "But this time, it's more subtle. Slower. Like the world itself is being taught to forget how to feel."
Elira's grip tightened on the hilt of the Weeping Blade.
"No," she said. "Not again."
She turned toward the village center and raised her voice. "Gather everyone. Tonight. The young, the old. Anyone with a heart."
By nightfall, they stood in the square—lamplight flickering, children pressed to parents' sides. Elira stepped forward.
"I was dead," she began. "Or near enough. And in that place, I saw a world of numbness. A future where we forget how to love because we fear how much it hurts."
Murmurs.
"I came back with a name. Caelen. He carried the pain of this world until it broke him. And then, somehow, he returned to me. Not because fate allowed it—but because love refused to let go."
She looked out over the crowd.
"So I will not let go of you."
She drew the Weeping Blade—not in threat, but reverence.
"This is our weapon. Not steel. Not flame. But feeling. And we will use it to remember. To weep. To speak names."
She stepped to the center of the circle and drove the blade into the earth.
And the curse, ancient and grieving, wept light.
The silence cracked.
A child began to cry.
Then another.
And another.
And hope—raw, real, and painful—was born again.