Chapter Sixty-Five : The Gathering Silence
Night fell over the northern hills, but the stars did not return.
Instead, a strange blue hue covered the sky, soft and shimmering like the quiet before a scream. Kael and Lira had made camp at the edge of the ruined forest — trees still scorched from ancient wars, their trunks hollowed like bone. The light within Kael's chest had dulled for now, but his eyes still faintly glowed.
He hadn't spoken since the Sepulcher.
Not truly.
He sharpened his sword in silence, while Lira tended to the fire. She'd watched him fight beasts, armies, even shadows — but now, she saw a weight in his posture she couldn't name. A knowing.
"What did it show you?" she asked, gently.
Kael looked up. "The world as it was… and what it's becoming."
"And what are we walking into, Kael?"
He paused.
"Something worse than a tyrant. Worse than war." His fingers tightened around the hilt. "We're walking into a silence. A forgetting. Cities gone without a sound. Whole towns without names. Not from destruction—just… erased."
Lira's brows furrowed. "That's not magic. That's something else."
Kael nodded. "Something beneath magic. Before it."
Elsewhere — on the edges of the continent…
Tudor stood before a crumbled tower, hands clasped behind his back. The fortress they had once defended was now overrun with moss and quiet wind. Yet he knew Kael lived.
He felt it.
Cristi approached behind him, wiping ash from her coat. "Recon says something is waking in the Western Wastes. But there's no enemy to fight. Just… echoes."
"Echoes?"
"Like memories. Walking around in flesh."
Tudor looked to the horizon. "We need to regroup. Get everyone left from the freedom armies. If Kael is still out there, he'll come to us."
"And if he doesn't?"
"Then we make sure there's still a world to come back to."
Meanwhile… deeper in the continent's forgotten lands
Kael and Lira passed the bones of a great beast. A dragon, or something like one. Its ribs were twisted like melted iron, its skull cracked and hollowed.
Carved into the stone nearby were words — ancient runes, barely readable.
Kael touched them, and the light in his chest pulsed.
Lira leaned closer. "What does it say?"
He translated slowly.
"The First Flame burned not to give warmth, but to warn."
Suddenly, a gust of wind swept through the canyon, and Kael's aura flickered to life.
Something was watching them.
Not from the sky. Not from the shadows.
From within the earth itself.