The Hollow of Ash and Echo faded behind them.
Kael walked ahead of Thorne and Elen, his footsteps strangely steady over cracked roots and slick moss. The mark on his forearm no longer merely glowed—it pulsed. A slow rhythm, as if it were breathing. As if something beneath his skin now lived and listened.
Neither Thorne nor Elen spoke for a long while. It was Thorne who broke the silence.
"You shouldn't have taken that name lightly."
Kael didn't look back. "It didn't feel like a choice."
"No. That's what makes it binding."
The trees around them thinned as they reached higher ground. From a rocky ledge, Kael paused to scan the horizon.
The sky was changing.
Veins of red flickered through the clouds, not from any setting sun but from something unnatural. Lightning without thunder arced in the distance, outlining the silhouette of a distant fortress half-swallowed by mist.
"What is that?" Kael asked.
Elen stepped beside him, squinting. "The Skarhold. A ruin of the old Thornbearers. Some say that's where the Codices were first written."
Thorne grunted. "More likely where they were buried."
Kael's hand instinctively touched the Codex hidden beneath his cloak. The book hadn't stirred since the Hollow, but he could feel its presence.
Alive.
Waiting.
They camped that night beneath a massive gnarled tree, its trunk split with age and its branches thick enough to block the stars. Kael could not sleep. Dreams came, but none stayed. Only fire. Always fire. In the dark, he saw a tail of embers slithering through the air, eyes like molten gold blinking from the canopy above.
He woke with sweat on his back and ash on his tongue.
Thorne was already up, boiling something in a small tin pot that smelled of roots and bark. Elen sat near him, sharpening a knife with slow, practiced drags of stone on steel.
"I'm not sleeping," Kael muttered.
"Good," Thorne said. "You're starting to listen to the world."
Kael frowned. "That's not what I—"
"Shh." Thorne raised a hand.
Silence.
Then—whispers.
Not voices. Not wind. But a layered, low murmur, like pages turning underwater or a crowd murmuring just beyond sight.
Elen stood instantly, sword drawn. "Something's near."
They moved quickly, silently, away from the fire.
Kael felt the mark on his arm flare. Not in warning—but in resonance.
"Wait," he whispered. "It's not a threat."
"How can you be sure?" Elen hissed.
Kael didn't answer. Instead, he stepped forward, toward the source of the murmurs.
A figure emerged from the shadows.
It was cloaked, face hidden beneath a hood of woven bark and linen. Around its neck hung chains carved with dozens of tiny glyphs, each one faintly glowing.
It stopped a few feet from Kael and bowed low.
Then it spoke—not with a voice, but with memory.
"Ashwrought. We felt your fire. We have waited."
Kael stared. The figure radiated no heat, but the words sparked within his skull like fire-touched paper.
"Who are you?"
The figure pulled back its hood.
Underneath was not a face—but bark twisted into the shape of one. Eyes carved into wood, mouth a hollow slit. Not a creature. A construct.
"We are the Writbound. Once guardians. Now watchers."
Thorne inhaled sharply. "I thought they were gone. Thought you all crumbled when the Third Thornfall broke the Chain."
The Writbound tilted its head.
"We do not crumble. We forget. Then remember."
It turned its attention back to Kael.
"You carry a Codex. A living one. The last one. It feeds on truth."
Kael felt a cold sweat form. "And what does it want from me?"
The Writbound's bark-face twisted.
"To burn the lie at the root of the world."
The Writbound turned, motioning for them to follow. Hesitation clung to the air like smoke, but Kael stepped forward.
They followed it into a small clearing surrounded by dead trees shaped like fingers pointing inward. At the center, a cairn made of ashstone and metal scraps rose from the ground. The Writbound stopped beside it.
"Here lies the bearer of the False Codex. Burned by truth. Broken by name."
Kael knelt, brushing dirt away from the cairn's edge. In ancient glyphs, barely legible, he saw the etchings of a name long buried:
Vaeloren.
"Who was he?" Kael asked.
"The first to try to rewrite fate."
Thorne tensed. "I've heard of Vaeloren. A Thornbearer who believed the Codex could be bent to will. They say he tried to unname death."
Elen looked at Kael. "Sound familiar?"
The Writbound extended a hand. A shard of obsidian rose from the ground. Floating. It hovered before Kael like a mirror. He saw his reflection—and behind it, fire.
Then, for the briefest moment, a serpentine shape.
Wings.
Eyes like furnaces.
The image vanished.
"You are not Vaeloren. You are Ashwrought. You do not bend truth. You survive it."
Kael reached out and took the shard.
It didn't burn him.
It fused into his mark.
They left the Writbound behind, their words echoing.
"Seek the Skarhold. There, the fire remembers. And the lie waits."
As they walked, Kael kept touching his arm. The mark had changed again—thin lines branching outward like a root system, weaving across his veins in ember-like filigree.
Thorne finally asked, "What did you see in the shard?"
Kael shook his head. "I'm not sure. But it felt like… it knew me."
Elen studied him for a long moment. "You're not the same boy who left the Vault."
"No," Kael said. "I buried him in the Hollow."
That night, Kael sat by the fire, eyes locked on the sky. The Codex rested beside him, unopened. But it hummed. Not like a book. Like a heart.
A low, whispering wind passed through the camp. And in it, a voice—not Vaelarith's, not the Codex, but something older—carried a simple truth:
"You are the wound. You are the weapon. You are the ash between."
Kael didn't sleep.
He watched the stars go out, one by one.
The path to the Skarhold was not marked on any map.
It wound through the remnants of an old forest choked by fog and shadow, where trees bled sap the color of rust and their roots clawed from the soil like fingers desperate to escape something buried below. The deeper they traveled, the heavier the air became—not just with moisture, but with weight, memory, and the crackling tension of unseen forces watching from behind moss-covered trunks.
Kael led the way. He didn't need a guide.
The shard embedded in his arm tugged him forward.
It was not painful—but insistent, like a heartbeat that wasn't his.
Behind him, Elen's boots barely made a sound against the loam, and Thorne's silence was more a presence than absence. No one spoke. Even birds refused to sing in these woods.
Something ancient stirred here.
And it remembered.
They crossed a dried riverbed around midday, its stones smoothed by long-vanished waters. Thorned vines crisscrossed the path, thorns blackened and sharp enough to gleam in the faint light.
As Kael stepped over them, a whisper reached his ear—not from ahead, but behind.
A child's voice.
"Ashwrought…"
He spun.
No one.
Elen noticed. "What did you hear?"
Kael didn't answer immediately. "A name. Mine. But not a threat."
"It's the forest," Thorne muttered. "It drinks names. If it hears yours, it tries to give it back—broken."
Kael looked to the path again. The fog was thicker now, coiling around their ankles. But the shard burned hotter against his skin.
They pressed on.
By twilight, they saw it.
The Skarhold.
It rose from the side of a granite cliff, half-swallowed by creeping ivy and tangled roots. Jagged towers slanted like broken teeth, and the walls bore the scars of something not natural—gouges too deep for blades, too wide for fire. A wide stairway led up into the main keep, flanked by two statues of Thornbearers whose faces had been defaced, worn smooth by time or something far more deliberate.
Kael stepped forward.
The mark on his arm flared.
The Codex stirred.
Behind him, Elen whispered, "I don't like this."
Neither did Kael. But he couldn't turn away.
The shard wanted him here.
So he climbed the stairs.
Inside, the Skarhold was dead.
No warmth. No sound. Just hallways lined with decaying banners, brittle with age, depicting symbols Kael could barely recognize. Not all were Thornbearer crests—some were stranger, swirling shapes that looked like fire trying to become language.
As they passed beneath an archway, the Codex unwrapped itself slightly—just enough for a few of its pages to flicker open.
Symbols hovered above the parchment like ash caught in candlelight. Kael froze.
"Do you see that?" he asked.
Thorne stepped closer. "Glyphs of remnant memory. They're reacting to the Skarhold."
Elen shook her head. "Why now?"
Kael felt the Codex pull again—not physically, but spiritually. It wanted to be opened. To feed.
He resisted.
Not here.
Not yet.
They reached a central chamber. Circular. A throne sat at the far end, made entirely of burned wood and bone—crafted not for a king, but a witness. Behind it, a mural spanned the stone walls.
Kael stepped closer to study it.
The mural depicted a dragon.
But not a beast of fire and flight.
This one was made of names.
Thousands of runes, inscriptions, and markings wove together to shape its serpentine form. And within its chest burned a flame—the same pale, eerie fire Kael had seen in his visions.
Underneath the mural were three words, carved deep:
"Vaelarith, the Cinder Crowned."
Kael's heart stopped.
He had seen that name before. In a dream. In ash.
"Who… or what… is that?" Elen asked quietly.
Thorne didn't respond. He only stared.
Then the mural shuddered.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
A sound like grinding stone echoed through the chamber.
And the throne cracked in half.
The chamber grew cold. Kael drew back, hand over the Codex.
From the base of the mural, fire began to leak—not orange, but white-blue. Cold flame. It crawled along the floor in tendrils, snaking toward them.
Kael drew breath, preparing to run.
But the Codex opened on its own.
The pages turned violently.
Symbols leapt into the air—this time not defensive, but seeking.
They struck the flame.
And instead of extinguishing it… they merged.
A single word emerged from the swirling light.
"Ashwrought."
And the flames formed a shape.
A head.
A long neck.
Wings unfurled in slow, impossible grace.
The mural was no longer paint. It was alive.
Kael stepped back, breath caught.
Elen's sword was drawn, but trembling.
Thorne muttered, "This isn't a dragon. This is a memory of fire trying to remember how to be flesh."
The thing turned its gaze upon Kael.
No roar. No threat.
Only recognition.
A voice—not audible, but felt—spoke in Kael's mind.
"You have burned your name to earn mine."
Kael gritted his teeth. "Who are you?"
"I am what remains when truth forgets itself."
The fire coalesced, forming a crown of living embers around the creature's brow.
"I am Vaelarith. I am the truth that burns. The first breath and the last word."
Kael's knees gave way. He fell.
The Codex levitated in front of him now, its pages unraveling in reverence.
Vaelarith extended its long, flame-shaped neck.
Its snout met the Codex's edge.
And the book shivered.
"You are Ashwrought. My kin by fire. My chain by choice."
Then, just as suddenly, the flames vanished.
The mural returned to stillness.
But the throne was gone.
And Kael's mark now burned brighter than ever before.
They left the Skarhold in silence.
No one dared speak for a long while.
Eventually, Kael said, "That wasn't just a memory. That was… part of it. Of him."
Thorne nodded grimly. "You've bound yourself to something older than Thornbearers. Older than Names."
Elen looked at Kael. "What now?"
Kael clenched his hand into a fist.
"We find out what it means to be Ashwrought."