They didn't speak for a while, just kept walking.
Veyla still walked ahead, quiet and steady. The only sound heard was her boots crunching through soot and old bones. Hex or at least that's what she called him—trailed behind her slowly. Every step heavier than the last.
His legs ached, his ankles stiff. His breaths fogged in front of him even though the air wasn't cold.
The trees had thinned out again, this time for good. No more rotten roots or fog-choked branches. Just open ground, flat and cracked like a battlefield long forgotten. The soil was black and brittle, ash curling up in the wind like flakes of burnt paper.
"Feels like we've been walking for days," he muttered, tiredness evident in his voice.
Veyla didn't turn around. "That's not far from the truth."
He almost asked what she meant, but she always answered with riddles and he was too tired for another puzzle.
Eventually, they reached what looked like a Cinder Shrine, though it barely resembled one. A dais lay in the center of the clearing, half-swallowed by roots and rubble. It looked way older than the rest he'd seen.
Stone warped like it had melted and re-hardened. It was probably one of the old shrines, before the change.
Veyla stepped close and knelt down, her fingers hovering over a faint circle carved into the altar's center, its sigil broken and unreadable.
"Grace had once lived here. Now there seems to be nothing," she said.
He stayed back, not out of caution. Just instinct—like the place didn't want him to enter.
"So what is this place, really?" he asked.
"One of the first sites," she answered. "Before the Ring fell apart for the second time."
He blinked. "The second time?"
She nodded slowly. "You know about the first Shattering. That was just the beginning. The world has been breaking ever since, just not to anyone's notice."
He stepped forward, his gaze sweeping over the fractured stones. They looked like they were crying—tiny streaks of white running down from the cracks like dried tears.
"Back when I played," he muttered slowly, facing down while clutching his side, "the world was already a wreck, but it had structure. There were rules, boundaries, and Grace worked then. Shrines functioned. I was guided."
He paused, and swallowed.
"Now everything just feels out of place. Like a memory."
Veyla ran a gloved hand over the altar once again. "The Ring didn't just break. It split something deeper. The Thronebound Sigil that held this world together—it fractured. And that's why the game you remember is just a shadow, like a shallow version of what was underneath."
He glanced at his hand—the Rune still on his palm, his only anchor in this place. But it felt weaker by the second.
Then he spoke, "Even this thing's fading.
Like it's running out of battery."
"It was not meant to hold you," she said. "Your soul isn't rooted and you weren't born into the Line. Neither were you called by a Flame Keeper. You don't belong to any of the Flame Orders."
"Right," he said bitterly. "I am a Cinder without a fire to guide me."
Veyla stood. Her shadow stretched across the altar, long and thin.
"Do you know the old stories?" she asked. "About the Lords of Flame? The Thronebound Sigil? The Demigods who took the fragments?"
"Vaguely. But... they're worse here, aren't they?" he asked.
Her jaw tensed. "They're rotting from the inside, the ones who are still alive. The rest became echoes of who they once were—and some are worse."
"Echoes?" he questioned, his brow furrowing slightly.
"Like memories that didn't fade properly. Bound to places, to regrets. They infect everything around them. The deeper you go, the more the world warps around them."
He ran a hand through his hair. "So the gods broke when the Thronebound Sigil shattered, and they're worse than they should've been. And now the world's just limping forward through what's left?"
Veyla gave a single nod. "And it still seems to remember what it once was."
He looked around his environment, noticing things he hadn't noticed before. The cracked earth, the dead bodies, the mud. The way the shrine groaned when the wind blew too hard.
"What does that mean?" he asked. "The world remembers?"
"It means the rules are still buried somewhere here," she said. "Not fully lost, but they're gone."
She stepped past him, toward the far end of the shrine. There—where the stones ended—a deep gouge tore through the land, like something massive had struck from the sky. A scar, jagged and blackened, ran down the valley like a wound that never wanted to close.
"That's where we're going?" he asked, turning toward her direction.
"That's where the Flame Scar is," she said. "It's the closest place I could think of, where the Emberlight might just answer."
He stared at the ravine, unsure whether to believe her or not. "And what if it doesn't answer?"
"Then the world's way worse than what I thought," she answered.
He chuckled at her statement. "Comforting."
Veyla turned to him, and for a moment her eyes softened—not with pity, but with understanding.
"You said you remember what the game was like," she said, "but not your name?"
He nodded slowly. "Yeah..."
"Then maybe that's just a gift in disguise," she said. "I mean, you have no chains like your past holding you back—just the present."
He didn't respond to it, just shrugged a bit. "I guess."
They walked to the edge of the ravine. Below them, smoke curled from the earth in lazy spirals. The sky above them was darkening—not night, just thicker clouds coming together. The air smelled of burnt stone.
Veyla crouched low, her fingers resting on the hilt of her sword. "Down there, the test awaits. If the Flame responds to you—then good."
"And if it doesn't?" he asked.
"Then, you'll know."
He didn't inquire further. Just stared down at the path ahead. A broken world, a broken Rune, and a name he still couldn't remember.
But somehow, he decided to carry on walking.
And the land opened up to him, watching him go.