Ashwood Hold was silent, but not dead.
Arjuna walked beneath collapsed archways and hanging roots. Stone halls stretched before him like the gullet of some vast creature. Trees had grown through pillars, ivy wrapped cold hands around once-proud banners. The air was damp, sour, and thick with the smell of rotting memories.
He moved carefully, blade drawn, though his left shoulder still ached from Ser Thorne's parting gift. The wound was shallow now—healed with impossible speed. But pain lingered like a whisper of something unfinished.
Above, crows screamed and wheeled.
Below, the dead stirred.
Ashwood had once been a stronghold of the Radiant Knights, or so Tellen had muttered during their brief time together. Arjuna remembered none of it. But his steps felt rehearsed, guided. He turned left where the corridor split without thinking. He avoided a broken stair not out of instinct—but memory not yet remembered.
As if he had died here once before.
The keep's heart lay deep beneath the soil—beneath layers of moss, forgotten oaths, and stone caked in rust. And there, in a sunken chamber, he found it.
A mural.
Half-destroyed by time, but unmistakable. Knights kneeling before a woman with white eyes and a crown of thorns. Behind her: the black sun.
Nyssara.
She was drawn in the old style, like a saint. Arms outstretched. Wings of dark fire fanned behind her, haloed in a crown of ash. Her gaze seemed to follow him even in silence.
Arjuna stepped closer.
Beneath her feet, tiny figures burned—knights, kings, dragons. And among them, he saw it.
His own face. Not as it was now—scarred, half-starved—but proud, young, golden-eyed.
A hand reached toward her, fingers blackened as if by fire.
He stumbled back.
"What is this?" he whispered.
A voice behind him answered. "A memory you buried. Like all the others."
He spun—blade raised.
No one stood there.
But the voice lingered, as if the stone itself had spoken.
"You left us here, Arjuna," it said. "You sealed us away to forget. But memory is a tomb. And it has cracked."
Suddenly, the walls pulsed. The mural bled shadow.
And from the corners of the chamber, they came—figures cloaked in armor that dissolved in places like smoke. Eyes gleaming faintly red. Not ghosts. Not quite men.
Echoes.
Each one bore a fragment of him—his stance, his voice, even his hesitation. As if they were reflections of paths he had once walked and abandoned.
One stepped forward. His helm bore no crest. But his sword… it was the same.
"You're not me," Arjuna said.
"No," the Echo replied. "We are what you threw away. Each time you broke. Each time you begged to forget."
They came at him.
The chamber exploded into motion.
Steel clashed with steel. But theirs was unreal—cold, hollow, yet perfect. They did not feel pain. They did not bleed. Each cut Arjuna made dissolved into shadow, only for another Echo to rise behind.
He fought like a dying flame against a storm of ash.
They were not strong—but they were many. And worse—they knew his every move. Every step, every counter. He was fighting himself. His worst selves. The ones who had faltered. The ones who had fled.
A sword nicked his leg. Another his ribs.
They spoke as they fought.
"You abandoned Nyssara."
"You let Thorne die."
"You forgot Vaelin."
"You forgot yourself."
He screamed and struck them down one by one.
Until only one remained.
A child.
A boy, no older than ten. Golden-eyed. Pale-haired. Standing barefoot, holding a wooden sword.
Arjuna froze.
"…Who are you?"
The boy looked up.
"I was you," he said simply. "Before the first vow. Before the gods. Before her."
Tears welled in the boy's eyes. "Do you remember my name?"
Arjuna's lips trembled.
"I…"
He didn't.
The boy smiled sadly.
"That's why we haunt you."
And he faded like dust in sunlight.
The chamber fell silent.
Only the mural remained—unchanged, eternal.
Nyssara, standing above it all.
Arjuna fell to his knees.
His chest heaved. Not from the fight, but from the weight of what had almost returned.
He was cursed to forget. But forgetting was not mercy.
It was punishment.
From the cracks in the chamber's floor, a single black feather drifted upward.
Far away, in a chamber lit by obsidian fire, Nyssara paused mid-step. Her breath hitched.
She looked westward.
"He's close," she murmured. "He's starting to remember."