The road east led Ael and his companions to a land not marked on maps.
Fields of silver-bladed grass stretched toward a sunless sky, and in the distance stood a village — silent, unguarded, and untouched by time. The houses were intact. Lanterns still hung from the eaves. But there were no footsteps. No songs. No smoke rising from chimneys.
Just silence.
Too perfect. Too whole.
Too wrong.
Rema approached first, hand resting lightly on her knife. "It's like they just… stopped."
Ael said nothing. His soul-sense buzzed like a blade across frost. Something was here — not hiding, but waiting. It wasn't malevolent in the way curses or monsters were. It was empty. Profoundly, painfully empty.
Nirra stepped past them both and placed a hand on the old wooden gate of the closest house. "This wood hasn't aged. It's been preserved by a stasis enchantment, but not one cast by any human mind."
Arien unsheathed his sword, the steel ringing far too loud in the still air. "It's a tomb."
"No," Ael corrected. "It's a prison."
They walked the length of the village street. Twenty homes. One temple. A dried-up well. In each house, they found people — not dead, not sleeping, but sitting or standing in perfect stillness. Eyes open. Breathing shallow.
Alive.
Yet not one of them moved.
Not a twitch. Not a flinch. Not even a flicker of recognition.
It was as if someone had taken the soul of the village and closed it like a book.
In the central temple, the truth became clearer.
The floor was covered in runes — delicate, intricate, pulsing with quiet sorrow. Ael crouched and ran his fingers along the edge of the pattern.
"This is soul-binding magic," he said. "But it's not just binding movement. It's binding identity. These people have been erased from themselves."
"Can you undo it?" Nirra asked.
"I don't know," Ael said. "It's old. Older than anything I've seen. This isn't the Hollow King's work. And it's not Vel's."
Arien stepped around the edge of the altar. "Then whose is it?"
Ael didn't answer. He was staring at a line of text written across the back wall. Words written in a dialect known only to those who studied deep memory magic.
Nirra translated aloud, her voice breaking as she read.
"They spoke too loudly.They remembered too much.So we returned them to silence."
Suddenly, the temperature dropped.
Not cold. Not ice.
But absence.
The presence Ael had sensed under the Rootspire Tree returned — not with force, but with absence so deep it threatened to consume the sound in his chest.
The shadows deepened in the corners of the room.
From within them, a figure stepped forward.
Not a man. Not a beast.
But a thing shaped like both.
It had no face. Only a mirrored surface, reflecting Ael's own image back at him — distorted, blurred.
The voice it used was Ael's own.
"You build your bridge.She stokes her fire.But neither of you asked the world if it wanted to be saved."
The figure tilted its head.
"You presume your emotions are the cure.But what if silence is mercy?"
Ael stood. "Who are you?"
The figure didn't answer.
It simply gestured to the villagers frozen outside.
"They are at peace. No pain. No memory.No hunger. No fear.What more could you ask of salvation?"
Ael's jaw tightened. "Consent."
The shadow paused.
Then it shuddered, as if amused.
"Your kind would rather suffer than surrender control. How noble.How wasteful."
Rema raised her blade. Arien readied his stance.
But the figure stepped back into the darkness, vanishing like smoke into ash.
Its final words lingered:
"Keep speaking, Ael Rynhart.The louder you are, the more I will be called."
—
Afterward, the villagers remained unchanged.
Nirra wept silently as she tried spell after spell to awaken them — but none worked.
"These aren't just bindings," she said. "Their sense of self has been severed. They remember nothing. Not even language."
Ael knelt beside a boy no older than six. The child blinked slowly, head tilted, mouth slightly open.
There was no fear.
No recognition.
Only stillness.
He placed a hand on the boy's shoulder.
"I promise you," he whispered, "I will not let the world choose silence for you."
He stood.
And as they left the village behind, a single thought echoed through his heart—
The war ahead was no longer just between the flame and the bridge.
There was a third path now.
One that demanded absolute quiet.
And it had begun to move.