The road that left Ashwood was narrow, overgrown, and mournfully quiet—like the world itself had forgotten it existed.
Arjuna walked ahead, his cloak torn and dusted with ash, the twin blades strapped to his back in silence. Tellen, hunched beneath his traveling pack, limped beside him with a grimace. His ink-stained fingers twitched every time they passed another withered tree.
"You don't hear it?" Arjuna asked.
Tellen glanced over. "The wind?"
"No. The whispers. The names."They drifted like the rustling of leaves, curling around his thoughts. Forgotten syllables, murmured on repeat. A song without music.
Tellen frowned. "Not yet. But we're drawing close. Hollowmere is only half a day from here. The veil grows thin before the Festival."
"Festival?"
Tellen nodded. "The Festival of Hollow Lights. Each year, the dead walk for one night. Candles are lit to guide them home. Most just want to remember. But some—" He paused, watching a black bird shudder and fall from a tree, dead mid-flight. "—want more."
Arjuna said nothing. He had no memory of any festival, but unease clung to him like dew. Since Ashwood, his dreams had grown sharper. Names bled into daylight. Visions curled behind his eyes like thorns. A woman in shadow. A battlefield in flame. And always… the sound of weeping rain.
They camped that night beneath a twisted oak, roots bloated and rotten. Tellen boiled tea, muttering a warding chant beneath his breath.
"The villagers burn cinder incense tonight," he said. "To keep the worst away."
Arjuna examined the twin blades. His own sword, a brutal weapon marked with a sunburst at the hilt, still hummed with faint heat. Thorne's twin blade—repaired in pieces—was cold. Lifeless.
"They were once the same," he murmured."Not just blades," Tellen said. "Symbols. Vows forged in godfire. There's a reason their steel remembers you."
Arjuna looked up. "You're sure?"
"You bled on the ring," Tellen gestured to the glowing circlet Arjuna now wore. "And it responded. That's no trinket. That's oath-magic. The kind that binds soul to soul."
"…To who?"
Tellen stirred the tea. "The last knight to wear that ring vanished after the Godfall. His name was sung in one breath with the Demon Queen. The legend goes he betrayed his own kind for her."
Arjuna's hands clenched. The fire flickered.
"I would not have betrayed my own," he said.But even as he spoke, he wasn't sure. The memory came unbidden: a battlefield of shattered spears. A voice screaming his name. A hand reaching for his—and him letting go.
Before dawn, the world turned silver. A cold mist rolled in, and from the trees ahead, faint lights began to blink—soft and golden.
"Lanterns," Tellen said. "We've reached Hollowmere."
The village sat quiet, a cluster of moss-covered homes straddling the misted road. Every door bore a candle. Wind-chimes made of bone rang gently in the breeze. A soft hush hung over everything, like the forest itself held its breath.
Children darted between doorways, dressed in white masks and trailing ribbons. A little girl offered Arjuna a petal, then ran laughing into the fog.
The innkeeper, a broad woman with deep lines around her eyes, stared at Arjuna as though he were a ghost.
"You've come again," she whispered.Arjuna stiffened. "What do you mean?"
But the woman only shook her head. "No one ever really stays dead in Hollowmere. Especially not those bound by vow."
She handed him a brass key.
"Room five. Don't open the window after sundown."
That night, Arjuna sat by the window anyway. The village glowed with lanterns. Shadows flickered between the trees—too tall, too silent.
Tellen busied himself transcribing notes by candlelight.
"Some say this place was once a battlefield," he said absently. "Where the Vowkeepers last stood. Others claim the Queen herself passed through here, cloaked in flame."
Arjuna turned.
"The Queen… Nyssara. Was she beautiful?"
Tellen's pen stopped.
"Dangerously," he said. "They say her smile could stop a man's heart. And her grief could break a god."
Outside, a faint knock echoed at the window.
Arjuna rose and opened it.
No one there—only fog, curling inward. But beneath it, on the windowsill, lay a single wilted flower.
It was wet. As if touched by rain that hadn't fallen in years.