"The moon does not rise. It remembers."
The sky broke in silence.
One moment, stars gleamed above the jagged cliffs of Vaeldraeth's edge. The next, a rift unstitched the heavens like a gaping wound. No thunder followed. Just the shivering hush of something ancient watching.
Arjuna stepped toward the cliff's brink, boots crunching frost-laced stone. Behind him, the others stirred—Vaelin, tense as drawn wire; Nyssara, her violet eyes narrowed beneath her shadow-veiled hood; and Tellen, scribbling furiously even as the air trembled around them.
"What is that?" Vaelin asked, her voice low.
Nyssara's lips barely moved. "It is not a portal. It is a memory. Something's remembering us."
The rift pulsed once—lightless and silvered—and a path unfolded from it. Not built, not summoned. Remembered into being.
Bone-pale trees arched over it, leafless and smooth, rising in a spiral toward a fixed moon that refused to move. The path led downward, through mist and time, into a forest that shimmered like a song on the verge of forgetting its melody.
"Moonshade Hollow," Tellen whispered, awe in his voice. "The realm between deaths. The library of echoes."
"You've read of it?" Arjuna asked.
"No." Tellen held up his journal, frowning. "But it's writing itself."
The parchment now bore runes older than the godwars. Tellen's own handwriting curled and warped, overwritten with lines of poetry that pulsed faintly with inked blood:
He who walks in shadow's hymn,Must not forget the name within.Lest once again the moon shall fall,And silence sing the end of all.
Nyssara stepped forward. "We must go."
"Why?" Vaelin's eyes didn't leave the path. "We've escaped the Black Vow's grasp for now. This place—this dream-forest—what does it offer us but another torment?"
Arjuna answered for her. "Because the Hollow remembers what the world forgets. If the Black Vow feasts on forgotten love, then here we might find its first wound. The first vow broken."
He didn't know where the words came from. Only that they were true.
Without waiting, he stepped onto the path.
The mist swallowed the sound of his footfall. He looked down and found no reflection beneath his boots, only an echo of himself walking backward. For a moment, it smiled.
He did not.
Nyssara followed next, silent and certain. Tellen clutched his journal like a shield. Vaelin cursed once under her breath before drawing her sword and bringing up the rear.
As they descended, time loosened. Each step stretched into moments that coiled like serpent-hair, and though the forest grew no darker, something in the light began to bend.
They passed a tree with names carved in it. Then another. Then a third.
All different.
All his.
"Arjuna of the Burning Vow.""Arjuna the Kin-Slayer.""Arjuna of No Name."
"Is this your doing?" Vaelin asked warily, tracing one with her gloved fingers.
He shook his head. "Not in this life."
A low hum began—dissonant and sweet. Not a sound, exactly, but a pulling at the soul, like a harpstring under water.
They turned a bend.
And there it was.
The Tree of Tongues.
Not the one from Witchwood. This one was silver, massive, and growing upside-down. Its roots burrowed into sky, while its branches dug into the ground like claws. Dozens of mouths hung from its limbs, whispering songs in languages long buried.
One sang of a knight who slew his love.Another of a witch who kissed death and woke as memory.A third hummed a child's lullaby in a tongue that hadn't been spoken since the first star died.
Nyssara fell to one knee.
Arjuna caught her. "Nyssara!"
Her breath trembled. "It's… speaking my name. The one I had before I was born."
Tellen's journal snapped shut of its own accord.
The Tree stopped singing.
One mouth opened wider than the rest.
And spoke:
"Welcome, O Bearer of the Broken Flame.Your vow sleeps below.Will you remember it, or bury it again?"
Arjuna stepped forward. "I will remember."
The forest shivered.
The sky rippled, and from it descended The Weeping Host—dozens of pale, eyeless figures in priestly garb, their mouths sewn shut, clutching lyres of bone.
They bowed as one.
Then rose.
And sang—not with voices, but with silence.