The path they followed was not marked on any map—no stone, no signpost, no whispered name passed through villages. It meandered between knotted trees and along riverbanks, sometimes swallowed by roots, sometimes flattened by centuries of wandering feet. The forest had its own rhythm here, neither welcoming nor hostile—only ancient, as if it had watched a thousand stories walk beneath its boughs and learned to say nothing of them.
For the first time in many days, Lyrian said little.
They had passed the edges of the hidden grove where the treehouse still slumbered beneath the soil. Mira had looked back once, as if expecting it to disappear the moment her eyes left it. Thorn simply walked beside her in silence. It was Mira who eventually broke the hush.
"Did you know him?" she asked. "The one who wrote the book."
Lyrian did not turn his head. "Yes."
"What was he like?"
"Unknowable," Lyrian answered. "Even to those closest to him."
She frowned. "That's not an answer."
"No," he agreed. "It isn't."
But he did not elaborate. And Mira did not press him. Instead, she looked ahead again, studying the road—if it could be called that—as they moved forward.
---
They arrived at a small settlement before dusk the following day. Not a town, barely even a hamlet—more a scattering of homes with thatched roofs and moss-covered walls, huddled close together like sheep in winter. Smoke curled gently from chimneys. Chickens wandered across dirt paths. There were no guards, no gates, no posted laws—only old men watching from porches and children playing with hoops and sticks.
It was the kind of place where names mattered less than familiarity.
Lyrian approached the central well and drew water with a wooden pail. Mira leaned over to drink, wiping her face afterward with her sleeve. Thorn was already talking to a boy his age, trading idle questions about nearby towns.
A woman with sunburnt cheeks and flour-dusted hands called from the doorway of a low, stone house. "Travelers? You'll want to speak to the elder. And there's stew, if you've coin or kindness."
"Both," Lyrian said.
That evening they sat on wooden stools outside the elder's home, their bowls steaming. Chickpeas, onions, smoked fish. Mira said nothing for a long while as she ate, but eventually, with her knees pulled up under her cloak, she looked at Lyrian.
"Why do you travel so far if you never tell anyone who you really are?"
Lyrian glanced up.
His voice was quiet, but not unkind. "Because they wouldn't believe it. Or worse, they would."
Thorn swallowed a mouthful of stew, then set his spoon down. "I would've believed it," he muttered.
"You're different," Lyrian said, with a trace of a smile. "You didn't grow up in a world that remembers me. Just one that forgot."
---
The night was soft. Crickets sang. Mira and Thorn shared a single room inside the elder's home, offered without question. Lyrian took the porch, sitting cross-legged in the dark, watching the last coals of a lantern fade.
He thought of Eira. Of Garron. Of the old songs sung in battles long turned to dust.
Of the tree, and the book that now rested deep in Mira's satchel.
She had not spoken of it since they left the grove. But sometimes, when Lyrian looked at her in the morning light, he saw something new in her posture—something that carried the weight of lineage. A fragment of purpose. Like a fire kept low for fear of spreading too fast.
---
They stayed for three days.
On the second, Lyrian helped mend a stone wall that had cracked during last winter's frost. He did not use magic. Only mortar and patience.
Thorn chased goats up a hillside and returned covered in briars and laughter.
Mira visited the midwife's hut and learned the names of herbs she didn't know before. The elder's wife handed her a book on root healing, and Mira copied several pages by hand.
Each night, the fire on the porch burned low.
And on the fourth morning, they left without ceremony.
---
The forest changed again as they traveled farther east. Hills began to rise more sharply, and the scent of pine hung thick in the air. They passed shepherds, traders, pilgrims—all on their own quiet roads.
In one village, they stayed in an inn shaped like an overturned boat. The ceiling beams still smelled of sea salt.
In another, they traded labor for lodging. Lyrian repaired a broken irrigation channel, Mira cleaned and sorted herbs for the local herbalist, and Thorn helped a carpenter raise new beams for a barn.
It was not glamorous. But they slept warm and ate well.
And Mira laughed more now.
Not often. But enough.
---
One night, camped beneath an overhang while rain swept the hills, Mira asked again about the past.
Not Lyrian's this time.
"Do you think people… change?" she asked, staring into the fire. "Or do we just get better at hiding?"
Thorn looked at her, but didn't speak.
Lyrian stirred the embers gently.
"We change," he said. "But not always the way we want to. Sometimes the parts we hide grow stronger in the dark."
"And what if we don't like who we're becoming?"
"Then stop," Thorn said, simply.
Mira smiled. "You make it sound easy."
"It's not. But it's still the only thing you can do."
Lyrian said nothing. But the fire popped softly between them.
The morning after the storm came quietly.
No thunder, no lingering winds—just the hush that follows a world wrung dry. The forest, which only hours before had trembled with wild light and roaring skies, now lay still, its canopy glistening with the aftermath. Every leaf bore beads of rain that glinted like glass in the dawn, and the air was thick with petrichor—earth's own sigh of relief.
Their campfire had died sometime in the night, leaving behind only curled embers nestled in ash. Thorn stirred first. He sat up slowly, wrapped in the rough wool blanket they'd bartered from the village two days ago. His hair was damp, and a faint scrape marked his cheek from where he'd slipped on wet stone during their climb out of the river bend.
Mira was already awake, her back resting against a gnarled root. She clutched Eira's diary against her chest, the leather worn smooth by her fingertips. She hadn't opened it yet that morning—but she had read from it every night since Lyrian first sat beside her under the old tree.
Lyrian, of course, was standing.
He always rose before the others. Whether he slept or not remained a mystery Thorn didn't dare poke at. Lyrian now stood at the edge of the clearing, gazing at a tree stripped bare by lightning—its bark scorched, split, as if the heavens had tried to carve a sigil into it and failed.
"The storm spared us," Lyrian said quietly, not turning around.
Mira looked up. "Why do storms never seem to touch you?"
A long pause followed. Thorn stretched and muttered something about being hungry.
Finally, Lyrian said, "Because I've walked with them."
---
By midday, they had resumed their journey, winding through old forest paths that twisted like ancient veins through the land. Mira noticed signs of long-abandoned roads beneath the moss—carved stones half-buried, too regular to be natural.
"This was once a highway," Lyrian murmured, brushing moss from a stone. "Empire road. Three hundred years ago."
"Empire?" Thorn asked, stepping over a patch of bramble.
"The Valmere Confederacy," Lyrian replied. "It fell before either of you were born. Its capital sank into the earth during the Third Sundering."
Thorn raised a brow. "Sounds cheerful."
Mira tilted her head. "How do you remember all this?"
Lyrian gave a faint smile. "Because I was there when it rose."
---
That night, they found shelter in the husk of an old watchtower overgrown with vines. A stone hearth still stood, and Lyrian rekindled it with a flicker of mana. The firelight cast warm shapes against the walls, painting memory across ruin.
Over stew made from dried herbs and the last of their bread, Thorn broke the silence.
"So that Nightmare… the archmage," he began, eyes flickering toward Lyrian, "was he really… human?"
Lyrian looked at the fire.
"Yes," he said. "The first."
Mira set down her bowl slowly. "But I thought… humans couldn't use magic back then. That only elves, dwarves, and fae could?"
"That's true," Lyrian replied. "For reasons no scholar could explain, humans were born blind to mana. It ran around them, but never through them."
"So how did he…?" Thorn asked, leaning forward.
"He made it listen," Lyrian said. "He tore open the gate inside his own soul and forced mana to obey."
Mira's voice was soft. "That must've… hurt."
Lyrian met her eyes. "Yes. It nearly killed him. But he survived. And became the greatest mage the world had ever known."
A silence settled. Mira traced a finger along the grain of Eira's diary.
"Did he have a teacher?" she asked.
"Yes," Lyrian said, his voice distant now. "She was not human. She was a Valkyrie. One of the last."
Thorn blinked. "I thought they were just a myth."
Lyrian shook his head. "No. I saw her once. A blade made flesh. Wings that cast no shadow."
He looked away then, his tone quieter. "Even I was afraid."
---
They lingered two more days along that stretch of forest, resting and repairing their cloaks. Mira practiced her mana control near a pool where frogs slept on lily pads, and Lyrian instructed her in silence, correcting her gestures with a soft hand and fewer words.
"You're using too much thought," he told her gently. "Magic isn't an order. It's a question. Ask the world, and it may answer."
Mira furrowed her brow, breath misting. "What if it says no?"
Lyrian smiled faintly. "Then you listen harder."---After a few days, somewhere in the forest,
Mira awoke gasping.
The world around her was dark, save for the glow of enchanted lanterns along the curved wooden beams of the underground treehouse. She clutched her cloak tightly around her shoulders, eyes wide, heart hammering against her ribs. Her breath made small clouds in the cold air.
She remembered—
—marble towers rising from a sea of mist.—silver spires crowned with stars.—a voice like wind through crystal: "Come home."
And then silence.
She sat up on the cot, shivering.
Across the room, Thorn stirred beneath his blanket, groaning in sleep and turning away. Lyrian was gone.
The silence of the place was deeper than night—it felt sacred. The only sound was the subtle groaning of the roots around them, as if the great tree above was dreaming too.
Mira rose, barefoot, and padded across the smooth wooden floor. Her fingers traced the curved edge of the circular table where Lyrian had left the ancient book—The Black Diary of the Nightmare. It was closed now, its clasp sealed by a ward etched in elven glyphs.
She stared at it, skin prickling.
She hadn't touched it.
And yet, it felt like it had touched her.
---
Down the spiral steps, beneath the first layer of the house, Lyrian stood with his hand against the bark of the tree. This chamber was older—lined with roots like coiling ribs, lit only by a bioluminescent fungus that pulsed faintly with green-blue glow.
He did not turn when he heard Mira descend.
"I saw it," she whispered. "In my sleep. A city."
"I know," Lyrian said quietly.
She swallowed. "What is it?"
He finally turned. His face was unreadable, but in the low light, his eyes held that soft ancient sorrow again—the one she had glimpsed when they first met.
> "I don't know what it's called now," he said. "It had many names. The City of Mirrors. The Silver Cradle. In the ancient tongue—Aethra'mirein."
Her lips moved with the word. It felt like starlight on her tongue.
> "You've been there?"
He shook his head slowly. "No. I was never allowed."
She frowned. "Allowed? Why not?"
Lyrian turned his gaze to the ceiling above them—toward the canopy of earth and roots. "Because I was not human enough."
The silence stretched.
Mira moved closer, wrapping her arms around herself. "It's real, then? Not just a dream?"
"Some dreams," he said, "are memories that haven't happened yet."
---
Back upstairs, Thorn sat awake now, pretending to be asleep, listening to their voices below. He didn't understand the words, not all of them, but he felt something had changed.
They were no longer just running.
They were following something.
---
Later that morning, it was raining outside, after a brief meal of dried fruit and spring water from the root wells, the three sat at the table while Lyrian opened the book again. Its pages cracked softly as they turned, black ink sharp against parchment yellowed with centuries. It wasn't written like a grimoire. It was written like a diary.
> "Day 22: I taught the first spell to a child today. A simple charm to warm her hands. She wept when her frostbite receded. I thought, then, that I might be a healer. A guide. I did not know what this would become."
> "Day 49: They've begun calling me names in the streets. 'Witcher.' 'Breaker.' 'The Nightmare.' I find it oddly... comforting. Better to be feared than burned."
Mira watched Lyrian's face.
He was not disturbed by the words.
He was remembering them.
> "You knew him."
Lyrian nodded, slowly. "He was my teacher. Before the Hero's War. Before I joined the Order. He taught me magic when the world thought humans were incapable of it."
> "But why does no one remember him?"
Lyrian shut the book gently.
> "Because he made them forget."
Mira's eyes widened.
> "He used a spell—Oblivionum Aeternum. A soul-burial. He erased his name from every tongue and every stone, because he feared what he had become. And what his legacy might do."
She whispered, "But you remember."
He nodded. "Because I am not human."
---
That night, the dreams came again.
This time, Mira saw not just the city, but its fall.
Silver towers melting into glass.Voices crying out, not in pain—but in song.A great silver gate, wide open, and behind it—a throne made of vines, empty.
And the word that echoed in her ears, over and over again:
> "Return."
---
She awoke with tears on her cheeks.
And in the silence, she spoke the word aloud.
> "Aethra'mirein."
---
In the darkness of the treehouse, Lyrian sat awake. He had not slept in decades. But tonight, he did not meditate. He only stared at the pages of the diary. His hand hovered over the ink.
And he turned to a page he had not dared to read before.
> "Day 402: I found the child again. The girl with the frostbitten hands. She is grown now. Strong. The first human archmage to surpass me. She asked me what lies at the edge of the world."
> "I told her a lie."
> "The truth would break her."
---
Lyrian's eyes narrowed.
Mira, dreaming of cities lost.
Thorn, hiding his fear behind stubborn strength.
And the echoes of a teacher he could never forget.
> The road ahead was no longer just about Eira.
It was about something older.
Something waking.
Something that called to the very blood of the world.
The roots parted behind them like a sigh, as if the forest itself exhaled an ancient breath, ushering them back into the waking world.
Above, the storm had passed, leaving the sky rinsed in silver.
Morning mist clung to the bones of the earth, turning the forest into a soft, half-remembered dream. Every leaf wore a droplet like a memory, each blade of grass catching the hesitant light of a sun that had not yet decided to return. Behind them, their footprints filled slowly with water, as though even the ground wished to forget.
Mira stood still, her gaze tethered to the hollow they had left behind—the tree that swallowed secrets. She hadn't spoken since Lyrian closed the book and placed it back in its stone cradle, as if re-shelving a piece of eternity.
Thorn glanced at her, scratching the back of his neck. "You okay?"
She blinked, surfacing slowly from somewhere deep. "Yeah. Just... cold."
But it wasn't the wind that touched her bones.
Lyrian stepped forward, cloak sweeping wet leaves in his wake. "We'll camp near the ridge. There's a cave in the old hunter's grove. Dry ground, high walls."
"You've been here before?" Thorn asked.
"Centuries ago."
Thorn looked at Mira. "Do you ever get used to that?"
She shook her head. "No. And I hope I don't."
---
By midday, they reached the ridge.
The world opened—stunted pines stood like old men bowing to the wind, and the hills beyond lay swaddled in mist, as if the storm had tried to wash the sky clean and failed.
The cave waited in the cliffside, shallow but dry, half-swallowed by thorny brambles. Lyrian waved a hand, and the branches unwound themselves like courteous serpents. Thorn raised an eyebrow.
"I really need to learn magic."
"You need to learn how to not snore through your watch," Mira muttered.
Inside, they made a quiet sort of camp. Thorn collected sticks. Mira laid out worn cloth like a ceremonial act. Lyrian whispered to the fire and it obeyed, blooming from the air itself.
Silence settled, stretching long between them like the pause between questions.
Finally, Thorn broke it. "That book back there… the Nightmare's book. Who was he really? When I entered the room the name Nightmare somehow came to my mind"
Lyrian stared into the flames. "A man born with nothing—who gave everything."
"You knew him?" Mira asked.
Lyrian nodded slowly. "Before the world called him Nightmare, he was a boy. Curious. Angry. Brilliant. And terrified of dying forgotten."
Mira leaned forward. "But he was human. And humans didn't have magic then, right?"
"No. He was the first. A crack in the sky."
Thorn let out a low whistle. "Bet the other races loved that."
Lyrian's gaze darkened. "They feared him. And when he proved them wrong… they erased him."
He pulled a broken chain from his satchel—rusted, but carefully wrapped. "His master's. A Valkari. She believed humans lacked more than magic—they lacked memory. The kind of memory that sings in roots and stone. She taught him to remember like the earth does."
"How do you teach that?" Thorn asked.
"You don't," Lyrian said. "You live it."
---
That night, Mira dreamed.
She stood beneath a silver sky, not painted in stars but mirrored light, as if the heavens remembered the sun.
Around her rose a city—not built, but breathed—its towers like crystal wind, its streets humming with a music made of emotion.
The city pulsed.
Not with sound, nor heat, but with memory: grief, longing, wonder… the ache of things not yet lost.
Voices whispered in a language she didn't know—but understood.
"You are not the first to dream this," a voice said, soft as snowfall. "But you may be the last."
She turned.
A woman stood on temple steps. Pale as ash. One wing, silver as moonlight, unfurled behind her.
Mira opened her mouth—but no sound came.
The woman raised her hand.
And the city broke.
Like glass struck from within.
---
Mira woke screaming.
She bolted upright in the cave, breath ragged. Sweat clung to her skin like dew to a blade.
Thorn was beside her instantly. "Mira?"
"It was a dream. Just a dream—"
Lyrian knelt at her side. "Tell me."
"I saw a city. Silver towers. A woman with one wing. She… she knew me. Then it all shattered. Like it was never real."
Lyrian's silence was louder than words.
"Did she have a wing?" he asked.
"One. Silver."
He looked away, his voice too calm. "I don't know who she is."
He was lying. Gently.
Mira didn't push. Not yet.
But she would.
---
The next day, the forest leaned closer.
They followed the river southward, the air thick with moss and silence. Thorn rambled about sword grips and wild boars. Mira said little. Her thoughts were still glass.
Then came the smell.
Smoke.
Lyrian stopped. He touched the earth.
"Ahead. Campfire. Not travelers."
"How do you know?" Thorn asked.
"The birds stopped singing."
They moved like breath, hidden by trees.
Below them, in a shallow ravine, soldiers circled a camp. Mismatched armor. No banner. Northern accents. Mercenaries—or vultures.
One, clearly a captain, stood hunched over a map. "We take the old road to Caldrith. Burn what's left. If it moves, it dies."
Mira went still.
Caldrith.
Her breath caught fire.
Thorn grabbed her hand. "Don't—"
But she was already aflame inside.
Lyrian stepped between them. "Stay here."
"What are you going to do?" Thorn asked.
Lyrian didn't reply.
He walked into the clearing like dusk falling.
The soldiers turned, laughing—until they saw his eyes.
"Evening," Lyrian said softly. "Which one of you leads?"
The captain drew his sword. "Who are you?"
"No one," Lyrian replied. "And that is enough."
The sword came up.
But Lyrian raised his hand.
And the wind answered.
The sword shattered—exploding into silver needles.
Panic bloomed. The others turned to flee.
But the forest moved.
Roots burst from soil. Vines rose. Branches bent. Earth wrapped around them like memory made flesh.
In moments, the men were pinned, gagged by ivy.
Lyrian walked among them. Calm. Breathless.
"You came to burn," he said. "But I buried this land long ago."
He lowered his hand. The trees let go.
"Walk."
They ran.
Back on the hill, Mira watched with wide, wet eyes.
"You didn't kill them."
"No," Lyrian said. "Fear travels farther than blood."
She looked down. "I wanted to burn them."
He met her gaze, gentle as ash. "That's why you didn't."
---
That night, sleep didn't find her.
She wandered beneath trees that listened.
Her hands trembled—but not from cold. From knowing. From becoming.
She raised her palm.
The air shimmered.
A flicker. A breath.
Magic answered.
And somewhere deep inside, a door opened.
She turned toward the cave, where Lyrian watched like a statue waiting for time to pass.
"He knows," she whispered to the dark.
And to herself:
"And I think… so do I."
Above, the clouds broke—not for stars, but for the slow silver breath of dawn.