It started with a bird.
Not the kind that chirps or sings, but one made of paper and light, floating across the sky like a wish that forgot it was folded.
Elira saw it before the others.
They were camped on a hillside where purple moss grew like stories and stars fell so slowly you could catch them in your palm. She was on watch, though nothing had come for days, only silence, only peace.
And then… the bird.
It circled once.
Twice.
And landed gently in her lap.
She touched it.
It flinched.
Then unfolded itself, not like paper, but like memory.
Inside was a message written in soot:
"You've woken something that was never meant to sleep."
She stared at the words.
Then at the ember in her lantern.
It glowed warmer than usual.
Almost afraid.
Sera was the first to wake.
She was older now, not in years, but in eyes. Elira had seen her walk through grief and out the other side without leaving herself behind. She had a talent for knowing what people didn't say.
"What is it?" she asked softly.
Elira handed her the message.
Sera's lips pressed into a line. "That's from the Hollow Archive."
Elira blinked. "What's that?"
"It's not a what," said Kesh, who had appeared beside them with a yawn. "It's a where. And no one's supposed to know how to write from there."
Elira looked at the others, now rousing, Isen, with stars in his hair; Varn, already sharpening a twig for no reason; and Solin, whose hands still glowed with the last of a dream-song.
Something had shifted.
The ember knew it.
And so did she.
They headed east.
Not by map.
By pull.
Elira felt it, a thread tugging from her chest, like a promise she hadn't made yet. Sera walked close, saying little. Solin hummed to the sky. Even the wind seemed curious.
By noon, the land changed.
The air grew colder, though the sun still smiled. The trees grew thin, as if trying to stretch away from something buried below. And the moss turned from purple to gray.
That was when Isen stopped walking.
He stared ahead.
Frozen.
"Isen?" Elira asked.
His breath caught.
"This is where my mother burned."
The others went still.
And so the forest told a second story.
Isen had never spoken much about his past. Just that he was raised in the Moon Temple and could hear the shimmer of stones. But now, his voice was steady, slow.
"My mother was a fire-singer," he said. "She made songs that could hold off death. The people loved her. But the rulers didn't. They said her voice could stir rebellion."
Sera's hand found his.
"They told her to be silent. She sang louder."
He looked to the ashes under the trees.
"They burned her here. The people didn't fight. They were too scared."
Elira knelt beside him. "She lit a flame they couldn't kill."
He didn't cry.
He just whispered, "I hope she sees this."
The ember in Elira's lantern flared.
And Isen's hand glowed gold.
They reached the Hollow Archive at dusk.
It wasn't a building.
It was a wound.
A crack in the ground that breathed mist and memory, with doors carved from the bones of forgotten things. Words shimmered along the edges: Speak only what you wish remembered.
Elira stepped inside.
Her lantern pulsed.
And the world bent.
The Hollow Archive didn't have walls.
It had moments.
Frozen mid-step.
People made of whispers.
Rooms that told stories when you walked through them.
Elira heard laughter.
Then sobbing.
Then silence again.
At the heart of it all sat a girl.
No older than Elira had been when she first left Ardain.
But her eyes were ancient.
And in her hand burned a second lantern.
Not like Elira's.
Colder. Hungrier.
"You brought yours to wake mine," the girl said.
Elira stepped forward. "I didn't mean to."
"But you did," the girl replied. "And now the fire remembers what it was made for."
Elira looked at the flame in the girl's lantern.
It was eating the shadows.
Not with warmth.
But with want.
"Who are you?" Elira asked.
The girl tilted her head.
"I was the one who waited. Who watched the Circle light the world and never got to burn."
She stood.
And the Archive shook.
"I am the fire that was left behind."