The road to Scorchlight was dead quiet.
No birds. No beasts. Even the wind moved wrong—jerking through the trees like it had forgotten how to breathe. The deeper they walked, the more the forest pressed in.
It wasn't overgrowth. It was intention.
Sylva walked at the front, blade strapped flat against her back, eyes always forward. Her footsteps stayed even—measured, not slow. She was leading. And she was listening.
Behind her, Raka moved in silence. Not just quiet—silent. His body barely disturbed the earth. His eyes didn't blink unless they had to.
Kael and Jace took the middle, murmuring softly, checking gear, flicking at detection charms that pulsed too quickly.
Coren walked last, a knife in one hand and a glass-tinted sigil shard in the other. His gaze drifted constantly—not at the trail, but at the things just off the trail. Movement that didn't move. Shadows that didn't belong.
They crossed into the valley basin by midmorning, and there it stood:
Scorchlight Outpost.
Once, it had been a watchtower and barracks for border patrols. Now it was... less. The tower leaned. The walls pulsed faintly—not with heat, but with light bending in wrong directions. Stone rippled, just for a second, like it remembered being water.
"Field's corrupted," Jace muttered. "Looks like time compression damage."
Kael frowned. "That's supposed to be alchemy-level stuff."
"Or memory degradation," Raka added.
Everyone looked at him.
He looked at the tower. "The Spiral doesn't erode space. It erodes story. Places forget what they were."
Sylva stepped toward the door. "Let's remind it who's knocking."
---
Inside, the outpost was wrong.
Wood creaked too late after footsteps. Doors opened before hands reached them. The smell of ash lingered—except no fires had been lit.
"Three shifts of guards were posted here," Coren said, checking the duty ledger nailed to the wall. "None reported back."
The paper was still warm to the touch.
Jace ran a spellscan over the floor. The glyphs flickered, skipped ahead, repeated—like watching a memory loop out of order.
Raka passed a cracked mirror in the corridor and flinched. It hadn't shown his face. It had shown a boy—no older than ten—covered in ash, eyes too tired for his age.
He didn't know that child.
But his bones did.
They reached the central chamber—a tactical map room, stripped now of everything but a strange spiral burned into the center table. Not etched. Burned. Like something inside had wanted out.
Jace crouched low, scanning. "Residual Ki. High concentration. But no elemental anchor."
"Then what is it?" Kael asked.
Jace looked up. "Something trying to act like Ki. But older. Dirtier."
Coren circled the room. "This wasn't a collapse. They were pushed out. Look—no signs of resistance. Whoever was here ran."
Sylva checked the corners. "Then we don't stay long."
"Agreed," Raka said.
But he didn't move.
He stared at the spiral mark.
It pulsed.
Once.
And his vision shattered.
A hall of stone and fire. A blade burning white. A woman kneeling in chains. A tower falling. His own hands—older, broken, wrapped in gold—reaching out to catch something glowing and small.
Then—
Kael's hand was on his shoulder. "Hey. You with us?"
Raka blinked. The mark on the table had gone dim again.
He nodded.
But Sylva didn't stop watching him after that.
---
They camped in a side hall that night, behind a collapsed archway and a set of runes that flickered slow enough to trust.
Kael kept first watch. Raka joined him halfway through, unasked.
"Thought you'd already seen enough of this place," Kael said.
"I wanted to see how it breathes at night."
Kael looked at him sideways. "You know how weird that sounds?"
"Yes."
They watched the shadows for a while. Then Kael said, "Do you think this is it?"
"This what?"
"Where it starts. The Spiral war. The one the archives pretend never happened."
Raka didn't answer.
Kael didn't push.
---
Before dawn, Coren saw it.
He hadn't meant to fall asleep, but something had whispered into his dream—and when he opened his eyes, the wall was breathing.
It flexed, just once.
A shape slid along it—tall, thin, wearing nothing but chains.
It didn't walk.
It drifted.
Its face was blank. Not empty—blank. Like memory hadn't filled it in yet.
And its head turned toward where Raka slept.
Coren reached for his dagger.
But when he looked again, the wall was still.
Raka's eyes were open.
Neither of them said anything.