Ashrel dreamed of fire.
Not the Flame he had bound himself to, not the Emberlight's sacred blaze, and not the kind that warms or devours.
No—this was a fire made of voices.
Each whisper curled and crackled through his mind like smoke.
He did not dream of people.
He dreamed of names.
And one of them was his own.
Not Ashrel. Not the name he had claimed in the Vaults.
But the one he had abandoned to survive.
He woke in darkness.
No fire. No light. Just stone and cold and silence.
Lira had gone ahead. The others had scattered into the city's edge, tending to the wounded, listening to the new sky.
He had stayed behind.
He'd told them he was resting.
But really, he was afraid.
Because he had heard it again.
The name.
Not spoken aloud — but written into the world. Whispered by the ground beneath his boots, and the wind in the corridors.
"Eranis."
A name from before.
Before the Vaults.
Before the flame.
Before he chose to forget.
He staggered to his feet.
The air around him rippled.
And the walls began to bleed light.
Not firelight.
Memory-light.
From the stone emerged a figure. Pale, translucent, familiar.
Not Lira. Not Kaelen. Not even the Triune.
It was him.
Ashrel—no, Eranis—stared at the version of himself that had been lost.
The figure didn't speak.
It only held out a blade.
Not a weapon.
A key.
The blade was marked in ancient runes. Emberlight runes… but not modern ones.
They were from the Age of Silence.
And only one person had ever forged such a blade.
Himself.
He reached for it.
As his fingers touched the hilt, memory rushed into him like molten gold.
He saw himself — Eranis — standing in a hall of truth, before a council of firebearers, offering them a weapon that could cut through lies.
And then saw himself burn the hall to ash.
Because they tried to bury the truth.
Ashrel fell back, gasping.
"I was one of them," he whispered.
"I helped build the old world… and then I tried to kill it."
The blade pulsed once in his hand.
Still solid.
Still his.
Then the voice came.
Not from within.
From behind.
"You are not the only one who buried himself."
Ashrel turned.
And standing in the doorway was Kaelen.
Alive.
Changed.
Eyes glowing faint gold, like fire contained in glass.
"They gave me back everything," Kaelen said. "But I don't know what to do with it."
Ashrel stood, the blade still humming in his palm.
"Then maybe we remember together."
Outside, the sky began to thunder softly.
But not with storms.
With voices.
The voices of mountains and rivers and trees — the world, remembering itself.
And the two men who once had forgotten who they were…
Took their first step toward who they might yet become.