They continued through the withered glade at dawn, the memory engine far behind them now, though Lucy could still feel it echoing in the space behind her ribs. The mark on her hand had faded, but the weight hadn't. None of them talked about the engine, or the visions Lucy had seen. Tom wanted to, but her eyes said not now. Kitty stayed close to her, watchful, but quiet. She trusted Lucy. That trust felt warm. Dangerous, but warm.
Frank led the group now. His pace was steady, deliberate. Tom watched the way Frank walked now—more confident, but not careless. He was carrying the weight of a memory that didn't belong only to him. He had remembered who he once was, and that knowledge was reshaping him with every step.
The terrain was shifting again. The trees thinned into crooked, arching pillars of ash-colored stone, like fossilized trees that had been carved hollow. Between them, the ground sparkled faintly with traces of glyph dust. Some of it pulsed when they stepped across it, faint as a heartbeat.
Susan knelt to examine it. "This isn't natural glyph fallout. This is leakage. Something is breaking beneath the surface."
Jack stared down. "Breaking, or waking?"
No one answered.
They found what remained of a village just before midday. It had no name, or at least, no name that the air remembered. Collapsed wooden walls, shattered glyph lanterns, and twisted metal fences choked with ivy that hadn't grown right. Frank walked through first, eyes scanning every ruined house with a soldier's stillness. Tom followed behind, watching the angles of every door and rooftop.
"Empty," Susan muttered. "Not just abandoned. Scrubbed."
Lucy stared at a burned wall. Someone had scratched something into it with bare fingers. The word was incomplete, as if the writer had vanished mid-sentence. The last visible part looked like it was meant to say "help."
Peter walked to the center of the village. "There are no remains."
Jack frowned. "As in, bodies?"
Peter nodded. "No bones. No ashes. No broken tools. Just... walls."
Tom scanned the horizon. "Something erased this."
Frank said nothing. He stood in front of a shattered well, staring into the darkness. A cold wind blew through the open circle of the village, and the glyph dust on the ground shifted again—this time spelling something.
Susan dropped to her knees, her eyes wide. "It's forming a script."
Everyone gathered around.
The dust curled, scattered, and aligned—then faded, leaving the words etched into the cracked stone.
We are not gone. We are written.
Lucy swallowed hard.
Susan's hands trembled. "They were... turned into memory. Converted. Stored."
Frank looked down at the message. "Velmorith," he said.
"No," Susan whispered. "This is more precise than him. Velmorith erases names. This... this converts existence."
Peter stepped back. "Then who did this?"
Jack spoke quietly. "Obruhn."
Frank turned. "We keep moving. There's nothing left here for us."
They didn't argue. They left the ruins behind, and with each step Lucy took, the whisper in the back of her thoughts grew louder, not in volume, but in presence. Like it had curled into the edges of her consciousness, waiting for the right time to unfold. She hadn't told the others about the second dream. The door in the stars. The eye that opened.
They stopped near a cave at the base of a black cliff by sunset. It was shallow, but defensible, and better than sleeping under the open sky again. Susan activated a perimeter glyph to keep wild energy from slipping in, while Kitty lit a controlled ember flame with a handful of dry leaves and a flintstone.
Tom sat beside Frank near the entrance. Neither of them spoke, but the silence between them felt solid, like a wall they had agreed not to break—for now.
Lucy sat apart again. Kitty joined her this time without asking. Lucy appreciated that. She didn't need questions. Just presence.
Kitty offered her a piece of dried fruit from her pouch.
Lucy took it and said, "Do you think we're losing ourselves?"
Kitty didn't answer immediately. She looked toward the fire.
"I think," she said softly, "we're finding out who we really are."
Lucy looked down at her hands. "That's what scares me."
Jack was sketching something near the fire—rough lines, trying to draw what he thought Velmorith might look like if it ever appeared in physical form. A blur of eyes, names, and broken reflections. Peter sat nearby, legs crossed, deep in thought. Susan flipped through her glyph journal, checking symbols none of them recognized.
After a while, Lucy stood.
She didn't say anything. She walked past the glyph barrier and into the trees.
Kitty stood to follow, but Tom held up a hand. "Let her."
Kitty hesitated. Then nodded.
Lucy moved through the trees slowly, carefully. The moonlight overhead was veiled by clouds, but the shadows felt soft. She reached a quiet clearing and stopped. There was no sound. Just wind and branches.
She sat down on a flat rock, pulled her knees to her chest, and stared up at the sky.
The stars above were still.
And then they shifted.
It wasn't fast. Not dramatic. Just... subtle. The constellations realigned themselves slowly, and Lucy's breath caught.
A new pattern emerged.
Not a star formation.
A glyph.
In the sky.
Her mark—on her hand—burned faintly.
And she heard it again.
Not a voice. A thought that wasn't hers.
She whispered, "I'm not ready."
The presence didn't answer. But she felt it. Not pushing. Not forcing.
Waiting.
Watching.
Lucy stood and backed away.
The stars returned to normal.
The mark faded again.
She turned and walked back toward the cave, slower this time. Her steps felt heavy, but her heart lighter. She didn't know why.
She reached the barrier just as Tom looked up.
"Everything okay?"
She nodded. "For now."
Kitty smiled faintly. "I saved you a spot."
Lucy sat beside her.
The fire was warmer now. Or maybe she was colder. It was hard to tell.
Susan looked up suddenly. "Glyph surge. West. Just past the cliff line."
Frank stood. "Monster Trio?"
Susan shook her head. "No. It's old. Really old."
Peter stood beside her. "Then what is it?"
Susan looked at them all. "I think... it's one of the seven vaults. And it's opening."
Tom drew his sword.
Frank stepped forward.
Lucy stood slowly.
The mark on her hand burned again, faint as a whisper in the wind.