They didn't speak for a while.
Veyla walked ahead, quiet and steady, the only sound was her boots crunching through soot and old bones. Unwritten or at least that's what she called him, trailed behind, every step heavier than the last.
His legs ached, ankle stiff. His breath fogged in front of him even though the air wasn't cold.
The trees had thinned again, this time for good. No more twisted roots or fog-choked branches. Just open ground, flat and cracked like a battlefield long forgotten. The soil was black and brittle, ash curling up in the wind like flakes of burnt paper.
"Feels like we're walking on memory," he muttered.
Veyla didn't turn around. "That's not far from the truth."
He almost asked what she meant. But she always answered with riddles and half-truths. And he was too tired for another puzzle.
Eventually, they reached what looked like another shrine, though it barely resembled one. A fractured dais lay in the center of the clearing, half-swallowed by roots and rubble. It looked older than the rest.
Stone warped like it had melted and re-hardened. One of the old shrines, maybe. Pre-shatter.
Veyla stepped close and knelt. Her fingers hovered over a faint circle carved into the altar's center, its sigils broken and unreadable. Grace had once lived here. Now, there was nothing. Not even a whisper.
He stayed back. Not out of caution. Just instinct. Like this place didn't want him near.
"What is this?" he asked.
"One of the first Sites," she said. "Before the Ring fell apart the second time."
He blinked. "Second time?"
She nodded slowly. "You know about the Shattering. That was only the beginning. The world's been breaking ever since. Little by little. Layer by layer."
He stepped forward, gaze sweeping over the fractured stones. They looked like they were weeping, tiny streaks of white running down from the cracks like dried tears.
"Back when I played," he said, "the world was already a wreck. But it had structure. There were rules. Boundaries. Grace worked. Shrines functioned. You were guided."
He paused. Swallowed.
"Now everything just… feels wrong. Like a dream trying to remember itself."
Veyla ran a gloved hand over the altar. "The Ring didn't just break. It split something deeper. The Thronebound Sigil that held this world together, it fractured. The game you remember was just a shadow. A shallow version. This is what's underneath."
He glanced at his hand. The rune on his palm, his only anchor in this place, still pulsed faintly. But it felt weaker now. Less alive.
"Even this thing's fading," he muttered. "Like it's running out of battery."
"It's not meant to hold you," she said. "Your flame isn't rooted. You weren't born into the Line. You weren't Called by a Flame Keeper. You don't belong to any of the Flame Orders."
"Right," he said bitterly. "I'm a Cinder without a fire."
Veyla stood. Her shadow stretched across the altar, long and thin.
"Do you remember the old stories?" she asked. "About the Lords of Flame? The Thronebound? The Demigods who took the fragments?"
"Vaguely. But… they're worse here, aren't they?"
Her jaw tensed. "They're rotting from the inside. The ones who still live. The rest became echoes. Or worse."
"Echoes?"
"Memories that didn't fade properly. Bound to places. To regrets. They infect everything now. The deeper you go, the more the world warps around them."
He ran a hand through his hair. "So the gods broke, the Ring shattered worse than it should've, and now the world's just limping forward through whatever's left."
Veyla gave a single nod. "And still… it remembers what it was."
He looked around. The cracked earth, the dying ash. The way the shrine groaned when the wind blew too hard.
"What does that mean?" he asked. "The world remembers?"
"It means the rules are still buried here, somewhere," she said. " Lost, but not gone."
She stepped past him, toward the far end of the ruin. There, where the stones ended, a deep gouge tore through the land like something massive had struck from the sky. A scar, jagged and blackened, ran down the valley like a wound that never closed.
"That's where we're going?" he asked.
"That's where the next Flame-Scar is," she said. "It's the closest place where light might still answer."
He stared at the ravine. "And if it doesn't?"
"Then the world's worse off than I thought," she said.
He chuckled dryly. "Comforting."
Veyla turned to him. For a moment, her eyes softened, not with pity, but understanding.
"You said you remembered the game," she said. "But not your name. Not who you were."
He nodded slowly.
"Then maybe that's a gift," she said. "No chains. No past. Just now."
He didn't respond.
They walked to the edge of the scar. Below them, smoke curled from the earth in lazy spirals. The sky above was darkening, not night, just thicker clouds. The smell of burnt stone drifted up on the wind.
Veyla crouched, fingers resting on her sword hilt. "Down there, the next test waits. If the Flame answers… you'll know."
"And if it doesn't?"
"Then you'll know that too."
He stared down at the path ahead. A broken world. A broken rune. And a name he still couldn't remember.
But somehow, he kept walking.
And the land, twisted, hollow, grieving, watched him go.