Seredath no longer wept.
Its towers stood straighter. Its illusions faded. The winds returned, bringing with them the scent of old ink, crushed stone, and forgotten magic.
And beneath the glass-roofed Hall of Lore, Ael Rynhart turned the first page of a book that should not have existed.
A prophecy sealed not with wax—
But with memory.
—
Elarin brushed dust from the runes carved into the stone lectern. "These weren't written by seers," she murmured. "This is living script. It rewrites itself according to what has… happened."
Ael traced the final line on the open page.
"The King Who Chose to Feel shall end the first silence."
He recognized it.
It was him.
The Hollow King's fall.
But below it, a new line shimmered into existence—ink bleeding across the parchment like a fresh wound.
"And from the wound he leaves behind, the Second Silence shall rise."
He felt the temperature drop.
"Second Silence…?" he repeated, breath low.
Elarin looked at him, expression grim. "That's not a metaphor."
She pulled a second book from the archive.
The cover bore a symbol Ael knew intimately:
A circle of flame inside a hand.
The Mark of Vel.
—
In a chamber of silence deep below Seredath, they found the rest of the passage—written in a dialect only living soul magic could read.
Elarin pressed her palm against the circle, and the runes flared to life.
"One who walked through fire shall inherit the wound.""She who survived the impossible will be the echo that awakens the void."
Ael's chest tightened.
"Vel."
But it didn't make sense.
Vel had been loyal. Fierce. Unshaken even in the Hollow King's presence. She had fought the Harbinger. She had buried the past.
…Hadn't she?
Elarin met his gaze.
"She didn't bury it, Ael. She carried it."
—
He remembered something then.
Vel's hands trembling when she gave him the letter back in Murali.
Her refusal to come to Seredath.
The line she had whispered that day:
"I don't trust what I'd become if peace ever came."
—
They returned to the surface just as storm clouds formed—not of rain, but mana.
Across the reborn lands of Aravelle, magical pulses trembled like earthquakes.
And from the southern reaches—where no war had touched before—darkness bloomed.
Ael could feel it.
Familiar.
Too familiar.
Not the cold dread of the Hollow King.
But something hotter. More violent.
More… human.
Elarin's voice broke the silence. "It's not a resurrection."
He nodded slowly.
"It's a continuation."
—
That night, Ael opened the sealed letter Vel had given him.
It was not written in fear.
It was written like a confession.
"If you're reading this, it means something in me cracked. Maybe it was always going to.Maybe it already has. I thought I burned the rage out of me. But it's still there.Not for you. For the world. For how it just… moved on.
If I change, don't hesitate.
Promise me, Ael.End me before I become the silence you fought so hard to shatter.
—V_"
—
Ael didn't sleep that night.
He sat beneath the stars, eyes locked on the southern sky.
The world was healing.
But healing was not safe.
Sometimes, the wound had to be opened again—so the poison buried deeper could finally rise.
And someone had to face it.
Even if that someone was a friend.
Even if that silence had a name.