The wind howled as Kaelen walked. Behind him, the last embers of the village's bones hissed into the soil. He didn't look back. What was there to see? The smell of charred wood clung to his robes, the faintest shimmer of heat still rising from Hollow Spine but he didn't feel the warmth.
He kept walking.
Each step through the frostbitten forest was heavy, not with fatigue, but with silence. He didn't even realize his hand had curled tightly around Hollow Spine, still and quiet, almost... content. Something inside it pulsed now. He hadn't paid attention when it shimmered faintly as they left. He didn't want to.
Snow began to fall. Lightly, like ash.
Hours passed.
When he finally stopped, the moon was high. He dropped to his knees beside a crooked tree and stared into the fire he barely managed to build. It flickered weakly like everything else around him. The warmth couldn't reach him.
And for the first time since it all burned, Kaelen spoke.
"Maelra…"
His voice cracked.
"You did this. You did this!" he shouted, teeth clenched. "You left your damn runes and smiled from afar. You watched them die. You knew!"
The words vanished into the forest, unheard by no one but him.
He gripped his head. Memories surged in flashes, laughter around the cooking fire, the way the elder smiled, how the children chased each other with sticks.
All gone.
Was it all because of him?
The anger collapsed into exhaustion. Kaelen didn't cry. He just sat. Still. Eyes fixed on the fire as it died down.
Then, a thought came. Quiet. Cruel.
This is what always happens.
Everywhere he went ruin followed. Velrath, Bhuddha and now Elderrest.
He looked down at his hands. Not for blood, but for something worse.
"Maybe I'm the curse," he whispered.
It didn't feel dramatic. It felt…obvious.
And that's when it started. The slow, creeping silence. Not around him but within him. He didn't want to feel this again. Not the guilt. Not the grief. Not the warmth.
Not anything.
The fire died.
From afar, if someone had seen him that night, sitting against a crooked tree with his robe hanging off his shoulders and snow layering over him they wouldn't have seen a man.
They would've seen the beginning of a ghost.