The road was uneven—cobbles swallowed by time and soil, disappearing beneath the roots of trees that had not waited for man's passage. The morning fog trailed behind them, stretching its long fingers toward the vacant village as if reluctant to let its silence end.
Kael led them eastward with measured pace, the blade at his back a constant reminder of caution rather than violence. His eyes scanned the tree line, but no birds fled, no beasts stirred. It was not peace he felt—only a pause in whatever watched from the unseen.
Beside him, Liora walked with her eyes half-lowered, her mind caught somewhere between yesterday and a memory yet to be born. Wren followed a few paces behind, murmuring to herself in that clipped tone she used when naming wild herbs or testing fragments of an old tongue. Seran walked last, staff tapping the ground in a steady rhythm, each step marked by an echo just a little too slow—like a second footfall from someone not quite there.
"I don't like it," Wren finally said, breaking the hush. "The trees are wrong."
Kael didn't stop walking, but he turned his head. "How?"
"They're too still. No insects, no moss. Look at the bark—it's dry, but there was rain only two nights ago."
She was right. The trunks around them were gray and smooth, not with age, but with something stripped—cleansed by force or rot or fire long since dead. There were no fallen leaves, only brittle bones of branches curled like knotted fingers at the base of each trunk.
"It's not rot," Seran murmured. "It's memory. These trees have seen too much."
Kael slowed his pace, stepping over a hollow knot in the road. "And yet they're not saying anything."
"No," Seran agreed. "That's what's strange. They could speak—but they're choosing not to."
By midday, the forest thinned into uneven hills with golden grass swaying in short, nervous gusts. Ahead, the sky opened wider, a pale expanse marred by clouds stacked like bruises across the horizon. A trail of low smoke rose in the far distance—steady, not frantic—coiling upward like a thread of purpose.
Wren shielded her eyes. "Another settlement?"
"Possibly," Kael said.
Liora's voice came quietly. "No. It's not a village."
They turned toward her.
"It's a place that listens."
Kael frowned. "You've seen it before?"
She shook her head slowly. "Not with these eyes."
Seran, instead of questioning further, closed his eyes and ran his fingers along the carved wood of his staff. "East of here lies the Vale of Ethers—a place older than the kingdoms, untouched by mortal line or stone. It's said to echo the thoughts of those who enter it."
Wren exhaled, irritated. "And we're walking straight toward it?"
Kael looked at the rising smoke, then at the faint shimmer that hung like a veil over the distant hills.
"We have to."
They reached the edge of the Vale by late afternoon.
A low mist clung to the tall grass, swirling around their legs like smoke from a forgotten fire. The moment Kael stepped into it, he felt a pressure—like someone pressing fingertips gently against his temples, not with pain, but with... familiarity.
Not memory.
Recognition.
Each step into the Vale felt like a confession. His heartbeat echoed in his ears, louder than it should have. He reached back, gripping Liora's hand without looking, and felt her squeeze back once.
Then a voice whispered—not aloud, but directly into his mind.
"What will you give, child of another world?"
He stumbled forward a half-step.
Wren caught him by the arm. "Kael—"
"Something's speaking to us," he muttered.
"It's inside my head too," she said. "It keeps asking… odd questions. About loss. About roots."
Seran dropped to one knee, planting his staff into the soil. "Don't resist. The Vale doesn't lie. But it asks. You must answer."
Liora let go of Kael's hand and stepped forward.
The mist parted around her like a ripple on still water.
Kael called after her. "Liora—wait!"
But she walked on, her pace unhurried, her expression calm. As she passed further into the center of the Vale, the grass shimmered silver beneath her feet, and whispers rose—not threatening, not cruel, but mournful.
"She carries the echo of flame."
"She is not the first."
"He gave her the name of a star."
Kael moved to follow, but Seran's staff barred his path.
"She must walk alone for now," the priest said. "The Vale calls to her, not us."
"What does it want from her?"
Seran didn't answer, and Kael didn't ask again.
Liora came to the center of the Vale.
There, in a circle of sunlit mist, stood a stone—weathered and unmarked, but not ordinary. The way it pulled light toward it, how the air folded slightly around its presence, made it feel like a memory given form.
She knelt before it, her hands resting on the earth.
And then she spoke—not in her own voice, but in a tongue that had not been spoken for a thousand years.
"Your fire has not gone out."
"The name you gave me still burns."
"I will carry it."
A light rose from the ground around the stone, no brighter than candle flame, yet impossibly vast. It wove around her fingers, curled up her arms, and settled into her eyes—not changing them, but awakening something already hidden there.
When she stood again, the Vale was silent.
Even the wind had stopped.
And then, as if satisfied, the mist began to lift.
Kael rushed to her side.
"Liora! Are you alright?"
She looked at him and smiled faintly.
"There was someone here," she whispered. "Not a person. A voice. It remembered you."
Kael froze. "Me?"
She nodded. "It said you weren't meant to stay."
He looked toward the stone, but it was gone.
The Vale had already begun to forget them.
They left the valley under a sky bruised with dusk.
No words passed between them for some time. The trail continued east, now firmer beneath their feet, and the air tasted of new rain, though no clouds had broken.
Seran finally broke the silence. "The girl has awakened something. The balance shifts."
Wren looked at him sideways. "You speak like the world's a scale."
"It is," Seran replied. "And too much weight on either side breaks the fulcrum."
Kael remained quiet. He didn't know what the voice in the Vale meant. He didn't understand why it remembered him, or why it had waited until now to speak.
But he knew one thing:
The past was no longer content to stay buried.
And the road ahead would no longer be just his to walk.