Chapter Three – The Shadow That Watched the Flame
Part Three – The Chase Beneath the Pines
The trees whispered his absence.
Wind, once sharp with frost, now bent softer—like it, too, remembered the hum.
Kaelen broke through the underbrush first, teeth gritted, arm still burned from his earlier cast. He didn't slow. Couldn't. His veins still sang with the memory of that lightning. Of the mask. Of the sword.
Yolti followed, breath tight, chest raw. She wasn't fully recovered, not even close—but something in her legs wouldn't let her stop. Not now. Not after what she saw.
"He's not normal," Kaelen said between pants. "That wasn't Doctrine training. That was something… older."
They reached the first bend in the forest path, and Kaelen paused, listening.
Nothing.
No birds. No branches breaking.
Just the memory of the Veilmark that had cast without a glyph. And the weapon that no one should've had.
"I've seen that sword before," Kaelen said low. "In the memory-glass at my father's hall. He said it was myth. Said it vanished the same day Solara did."
Yolti swallowed. Her fingers traced her own Veilmark, pulsing faintly at her collarbone. "…That can't be the same one."
Kaelen didn't respond.
He looked back, just once—back toward the spot where the Grinn had died. Its body hadn't even faded the way Riftborn usually did. Its corpse remained, pulsing faintly with fractured energy, as if still tethered to the world by something older than silence.
He pressed forward.
Each step felt like chasing the edge of a song you almost remembered.
They passed twisted roots, trees scorched faintly at the tips. Lightning residue. Traces.
"He's leaving signs," Kaelen muttered. "He wants to be followed."
"Then why not just talk to us?" Yolti asked.
Kaelen didn't answer right away.
They reached a clearing—one Kaelen had never seen, though he'd walked these woods a hundred times.
And at the center of the clearing…
A symbol carved into the earth.
A spiral. Winding inward. Faint glow. Veil-etched.
Kaelen dropped to his knees, brushing snow from its edges. "This is a glyph."
"No," Yolti said, her voice trembling. "This is a trail."
A hum echoed once—distant, like a pulse drawn through glass—and then vanished.
Kaelen looked to the north, where the trees split wider.
"…He's not hiding," Kaelen said. "He's waiting."
Yolti stepped beside him, her voice still soft. "Do we follow?"
Kaelen stood.
Stared into the trees.
"I think we were always meant to."
And they ran again—into the dark, into the trail that pulsed with silence.
Somewhere ahead… the one with the memory of lightning waited.
And behind them…
The Grinn corpse finally cracked, splintering into black glass and ash, devoured by a Veilmark not their own.