Ashveil's silence wasn't ordinary.
It was a silence that breathed.
After the last echoes of Raen's scream had been swallowed by the ash-slicked wind, the world around him shifted like a held breath finally released. Shadows fluttered like dying embers. The crumbling remains of the subterranean sanctum crackled with the heat of vanished illusions. The girl—Ashra—was gone.
But not really.
Raen knelt in the ruin of her illusions, the still-warm ashes of a phantom memory burning into his knees. His fingers trembled around the hilt of Namereaver, still humming with names it couldn't devour. Names that weren't lies. Names that were never meant to be spoken.
He heard the name again.
Not aloud. Not from her lips. But within him. Whispered like a cut.
"Azel."
His true name. The one that died the day the flames took her. The name he buried when he chose vengeance over grief.
Behind him, Keir stood shaking, his hand over his ears as if trying to block out voices no one else could hear.
