Chapter Forty: Echoes in the Hollow Vale
The forest was old—older than the kingdoms that had risen and fallen beneath its shade. Trees twisted like grasping hands, their bark knotted with faces time had carved in cruelty. Moss hung from branches like funeral veils. Fog clung low to the ground, curling around roots and stones like something alive.
No birds sang here. No beasts cried.
Only silence reigned in the Hollow Vale.
Eris rode alone, her grey cloak soaked with mist, her bow strung tight across her back. She had hunted men in deserts, stalked shadows through shattered keeps, survived ambushes in the marshes of Darnal Fen—but nothing unnerved her like the stillness of this place. It was the kind of quiet that remembered violence. The kind of silence that could smother thought.
They said the Hollow Vale was cursed. That long ago, a battle had been fought here so fierce the earth itself refused to forget.
The trees had grown in its memory. Crooked. Watching.
The stories said Lorien once passed through here, years ago, bleeding and broken. It was said the Vale had not dared touch him. It was said he bled into the roots and the forest took his pain as law.
She hoped it would grant her the same mercy.
By the first night, her horse refused to go further. She tied it to a branch and continued on foot. The air was thick, like breathing through cloth. Every step felt like a trespass.
She marked her trail with carved symbols—a habit from the Hollow Vale's edges where she had once tracked raiders. But here, the markings faded. Carvings dulled as if the trees healed over them. Something unseen watched. Not a predator. Something older.
On the third night, she found the sign.
A tree marked not with blade or fire—but chalk.
Three lines. One broken.
It was a cipher from Ivan's era. It meant: Watched. Move only by moonlight.
She waited.
Curled beneath a canopy of roots, she didn't sleep. She only listened. To the windless quiet. To the sound of bark creaking as if drawing breath. Her fingers traced the chalk again and again, like a prayer.
When the moon rose, she moved.
Her boots made no sound. Her breath was a ghost. Between the trees, she followed no path. Only instinct. And memory.
An hour past midnight, she came upon ruins—not of stone or keep, but of people.
Scattered bones at the base of a blackened tree. Rusted weapons half-buried in moss. Cloaks that had once borne royal insignias, now tattered beyond recognition.
It was a grave.
But not one made by war.
She knelt, touching the charred earth. Ash still clung to the roots. The tree itself bore the stain of fire long past, its bark forever blackened, as though it had drunk sorrow and made it flesh.
She closed her eyes and whispered an old farewell.
Suddenly, a whisper cut through the dark.
"You walk in the footsteps of the hunted."
Eris turned in a blink, arrow drawn in a breath. The shaft aimed for the space between two trees.
A figure stood there. Cloaked, hooded, unmoving.
She said nothing.
The figure stepped forward—slow, deliberate. The mist parted around him like cloth. He moved like a memory, like something not fully part of the world.
"Tell your kingling he sends birds into dragon-haunted woods."
"I carry no crown," Eris replied. "Only a message."
From her cloak she pulled the token—a coin shaped like an open palm, the mark of Ivan's students. She tossed it lightly.
The figure caught it without looking.
Held it.
Stared.
Then removed his hood.
Silver hair. Eyes sharp as winter.
The ghost of a scar across his brow.
Lorien.
He looked older than the stories. But stronger too. Not in body. In presence. Like someone who had carried silence through fire and come out burned, but unbroken.
"I thought I'd have more time," he murmured.
His voice was dry earth. Wind over bones. And sorrow hung from it like frost.
Then he looked at her, a long, quiet gaze.
"Come," he said. "We have much to speak of. And less time than either of us would like."
He turned, not waiting for her to follow, and vanished into the trees.
She hesitated only a moment, then lowered her bow.
And stepped after him.
They walked in silence.
For hours.
The forest opened only for Lorien. Paths appeared where before there were none. Branches shifted to let him pass. Fog thinned. Even the silence changed—not vanished, but softened, as if the woods recognized him.
Eventually, they reached a hollow beneath a rocky overhang where a fire crackled in a stone circle, untouched by weather. Around it, carved into the stone itself, were runes older than any kingdom Eris knew.
Lorien sat.
Gestured.
She joined him.
"Caedren sent you," he said. Not a question.
"He fears what stirs. The Assenters have returned."
He closed his eyes.
"Of course they have. Like rot under floorboards."
Eris watched him carefully. "He needs your help. He remembers what you taught him."
Lorien looked into the fire.
"Memory is not enough."
"He's not a child."
"No," Lorien said. "He's something rarer. A man who remembers why children were once safer."
He reached into a pack and drew forth a bundle wrapped in oiled cloth. Unwrapped it. Inside lay a scroll sealed with wax long faded.
"Ivan gave me this the night before the Sanctuary burned," he said. "I never opened it. Said I would know when the time came."
He broke the seal.
Read in silence.
His hands trembled.
Then he passed it to Eris.
"Give him this. Tell him I will come. One last time."
And for a moment, the fire caught his eyes—and in them, she saw not just sorrow.
But something sharper.
Resolve.
A storm ready to break.