The glass-like root split open—without sound.
No shards fell. No body hit the floor. The First Patient simply stepped out, as if she'd been waiting behind a curtain.
Her feet touched the stone softly.
Her silver-veined skin glowed faintly in the dark, and her eyes—now open—reflected nothing but light shaped like memory.
Elric took a breath.
"Can you still feel them?" he asked.
She nodded slowly. "I always did. Even when they forgot I existed."
Lira kept her blade drawn, but did not move.
Sylas whispered, "This isn't resurrection. This is... continuation."
---
Outside: The Fall Begins
The Ember Ward had reached the base of the Spire.
Their leader stepped forward, both hands now glowing with inverse flame—dark red fire that didn't burn, but scraped.
The runes on the Hollow Spire dimmed.
The tower moaned—not cracking, but fading.
As if it were being unwritten.
Cai screamed from the ridge. "They're deleting the names!"
Marin fell to her knees. "I can't remember my own brother's face!"
Even the earth forgot its roots.
---
Inside: The Counter-Surge
The First Patient stepped forward into the center of the chamber.
Elric stood beside her.
"You were meant to be the beginning," he said. "They tried to bury you as an end."
She looked at him.
"No more burial."
She raised one hand—and her memory threads snapped outward like lightning. Not to attack—but to anchor.
Every forgotten name carved in the marrow book glowed.
The crack along the Spire's wall pulsed once—then stopped.
Outside, the Ember Ward leader froze.
She turned her eyes skyward.
"No," she said aloud. "That can't exist."
---
Memory Reclaimed
The sky above the Hollow Spire shattered into color.
Silver threads wove across the horizon, connecting places long separated: ruins, broken cities, even far-off watchtowers. Names long lost echoed on the wind—whispered by people who didn't know they remembered them.
> "Arlen the Weaver…"
> "Sheera of the South Hall…"
> "Ena. My sister Ena…"
People wept.
Children stopped crying.
Even trees stood straighter.
And the Ember Ward—so confident, so silent—began to falter.
Their red fire flickered.
Their minds began to remember what they were before they were weapons.
---
Final Blow
The First Patient spoke once—her voice full and real now.
> "You cannot erase pain by forgetting it. You heal it by naming it."
She reached outward—and her silver light touched the ground beneath the Ember Ward.
Not fire. Not lightning.
Stories.
Every step they'd taken. Every name they'd erased. Every face they'd passed.
They saw it all again.
And it broke them.
One by one, the Ward fell—not dead. Undone.
Their veils dropped.
Their flame sigils dimmed.
And their leader... wept.
---
Aftermath
Elric knelt at the top of the stairs, exhausted but steady.
The First Patient stood at his side, silent, watching the horizon return to balance.
Sylas approached slowly. "You just made history remember itself."
"No," Elric said. "I just reminded it that it never left."
Lira wiped her blade and looked toward the fading red glow in the valley.
"So," she said. "Now what?"
The First Patient turned to them.
> "Now we remember the ones still hiding. Because the Council has one last name they buried."
---