Arlen stood in the mist, the taste of ash on his tongue.
Evelyn was breathing barely.
But something in her had changed.
Her eyes once held fire tempered, focused.
Now they were pools of reflection,
too deep,
too still.
He lifted her gently, cradling her weight like a dying oath.
She did not speak.
But her presence whispered.
It wasn't Evelyn who returned from the Shard Gate.
Not entirely.
The Silent Return
Word of Evelyn's "victory" spread quickly.
Messengers told tales of a hero who had faced the Gate and lived.
The Gate no longer pulsed.
The stars were no longer falling.
And yet…
No bells rang.
No songs were sung.
Villages lit more candles at night than ever before.
They knew something had changed.
The kind of change that didn't scream
but waited.
In shadows.
In silence.
In Evelyn.
Arlen's Suspicion
He watched her from across the fire.
She didn't eat.
Didn't blink much.
Sometimes, she stared at nothing, and the air around her shimmered with unseen heat.
She had always been reserved.
Burdened by loss.
But now
now she was something else.
When he called her name, she responded.
But only after a pause.
Like a question echoing through empty halls.
Whispers in the Flame
On the fourth night, Arlen awoke to a sound
not a cry,
not a voice,
but the hum of a low chant from Evelyn's tent.
He crept to the flap.
Peered inside.
She sat cross-legged.
Eyes open glowing faintly.
Symbols burned in the dirt around her.
Old ones. Forbidden.
The language of the Beforeplace.
"Veyr'aeth… does not slumber…" she whispered.
"…it waits. In me. Through me."
Arlen's blood ran cold.
This wasn't Evelyn.
This was a vessel.
Elsewhere: The Cult Rises
In the western reaches lands thought safe
temples had grown hollow.
Priests vanished.
And in their place,
new figures emerged cloaked in bone-white linen,
their faces painted with the starless sky.
The Cult of the Echo had returned.
They preached a single truth:
"The Gate was not closed. It was made flesh."
And their new goddess?
She had a name.
Evelyn.
The Mark Appears
The next morning, Arlen confronted her.
"You need to tell me what you brought back."
Evelyn looked at him.
But behind her gaze,
he saw someone else looking through her.
She pulled back her sleeve.
A mark pulsed on her forearm
a spiral of teeth around a hollow eye.
Dark.
Shifting.
"I didn't bring anything back," she said.
"It followed me."
The Choice Ahead
Now the path was clear.
The Gate was not just a place.
It was a becoming.
And Evelyn was its beginning.
Arlen knew what must be done.
But the question remained:
Could he kill the woman he loved…
to stop what she was becoming?
The Oracle in the Ashen Vale
Arlen rode west, alone.
He didn't leave a note.
Didn't say goodbye.
Evelyn wouldn't have let him go if she knew.
Or… whatever was in Evelyn.
He only knew one place might hold answers
one voice older than the Gate, older than even the legends:
The Oracle of the Ashen Vale.
Through the Vale of Bones
The Vale was cursed.
Not by magic,
but by time.
Its trees stood charred and petrified.
Its ground cracked with heatless ash.
And the wind
the wind carried whispers not your own.
As Arlen stepped deeper into its heart,
he heard them:
"She is coming…"
"The gate walks…"
"You will kneel too…"
He pressed forward.
Every step was a dare.
Every breath tasted of endings.
The Oracle Speaks
She sat on a throne of twisted roots,
blindfolded with crimson cloth,
surrounded by crows who did not blink.
The Oracle of Ashen Vale.
She did not speak until Arlen was within arm's reach.
And when she did,
it was with his voice.
"You love her still," she said.
Arlen flinched. "She's not she's not the same."
"She never was. She was chosen before she breathed her first word."
He stepped forward, desperation rising. "How do I stop it? How do I save her?"
The Oracle tilted her head.
"You don't stop the storm by standing in its path.
You become the thunder that answers it."
A Path of Pain
She reached forward, pressing two fingers to Arlen's chest.
Burning light surged through him.
Visions.
Evelyn standing over a burning city.
A crown of shadows on her head.
People kneeling not in worship, but fear.
The sky cracked.
The Gate opened again from within her.
And then…
A blade.
Arlen's blade.
Through her heart.
A choice.
"You will be the blade or the chain," the Oracle whispered.
"Choose, before the world is made to kneel."
Back in the Camp
Evelyn stood before a mirror.
Her eyes flickered once silver, now black at the edges.
The mark on her arm pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat.
She wasn't alone in the tent.
A shadow watched from the corner.
It spoke in the voice of many
"They crown you soon."
"You will unmake the world."
Evelyn smiled, but it wasn't her smile.
"Let them try to stop me."
Crown of Thorns
The storm had begun.
Not of wind or rain
but of whispers, blood, and shadow.
Evelyn stood in the center of a circle of robed figures,
their chants swirling like mist around her.
Above, the sky had split open.
No sun. No moon. Only that yawning tear in the firmament.
And from it bled darkness.
At her feet, symbols glowed etched in bone dust and ash.
The old language.
The one no one was meant to speak again.
She felt no fear.
Only power.
Coiling, rising, hungering.
The Coronation
The High Priest stepped forward.
He wore no face.
Just a mask of mirrored glass that reflected Evelyn's image
but not her as she was.
It showed her with wings of flame, eyes of void, and a mouth that split into a hundred screams.
"Kneel, Gatewalker," he said, voice like stone cracking.
She did.
And the crown was placed on her head
woven from thorns, bone, and stardust.
It pierced her scalp. Blood ran down her face.
She didn't blink.
"Rise, Herald of the End."
Elsewhere – The Silent Forge
Arlen knelt before the ancient anvil, his hands trembling.
The Oracle was gone.
The crows had fled.
Only the Forge remained hidden beneath ash and forgotten time.
Here, the sword would be made.
But it needed a price.
A memory.
A truth.
A piece of the soul.
Arlen placed a memory on the altar:
Evelyn, laughing beside a river, before the world turned cruel.
The flames accepted it.
The blade began to take shape dark silver, veined with red light,
etched with a single word:
"Mercy."
The Fall of Blackreach
Back in the capital, the skies wept fire.
Blackreach burned.
The cult had moved.
Evelyn or what she was becoming walked the streets as soldiers fell before her without a touch.
Her crown shone like a second sun.
Each step she took cracked the earth.
Buildings shattered from the pressure of her presence.
The palace gates melted at her whisper.
And when the king stood before her with his golden blade,
she raised her hand
And turned him to salt.
A Choice Approaches
Far away, Arlen looked up as the wind shifted.
He felt her.
The bond hadn't broken.
Not yet.
But it was fraying.
He clenched the sword Mercy and whispered,
"I'm coming."
The shadows answered.
And somewhere deep within her,
for just one second… Evelyn hesitated.