The morning came not with light, but with a strange stillness.
Yeo stood atop the cragged cliffs overlooking the Hollow Expanse, a dead land where no wind blew and no beast stirred. The runes on his arm pulsed in rhythm with his breath—alive, ancient, searching.
Arin's final words echoed in his mind:
"Find the one who never forgot. She remembers everything. Even you."
He didn't know where to begin. But the runes did.
With every step across the Hollow, they glowed brighter, tugging at something unseen—like a compass bound to memory instead of direction. Time felt loose here. The world whispered fragments of forgotten names and places. This was a place abandoned by history, untouched by gods or men.
By dusk, the path brought him to a ruin hidden beneath twisted roots and iron trees—a half-buried temple veiled in silence. On its arch was an inscription in a script no longer spoken, yet he could read it as if it were his own tongue:
"Memory does not die. It simply waits."
Yeo stepped inside.
The air shifted. He felt it instantly.
The Veil was thin here.
Within the ruins, in a chamber untouched by time, sat a woman cloaked in threads of silver mist. Her hair was long, white as moonlight, and her eyes were deep pools of twilight. She did not look up as he entered, but the moment he stepped closer, she spoke:
"You are late, Yeo."
He froze.
"How do you know my name?"
"I remember you," she said, rising slowly. "I have remembered you through a thousand cycles, a thousand deaths, a thousand forgotten wars. You have come to me in every life, and I have watched you fall every time."
Yeo's throat tightened. "Then why am I here again?"
She tilted her head, studying him. "Because something changed. This time, the gods do not remember you. But I do. And that means the cycle can be broken."
"Who are you?" he asked.
She stepped into the light. Her skin shimmered with runes much like his—older, deeper, embedded into her very soul.
"I am Lirael, the Keeper of the Threads. The last Witness. The one who remembers all that the gods tried to erase."
The room dimmed as if the walls themselves bent to her presence.
"Long ago," Lirael continued, "before the gods shattered the world, they feared a prophecy—a mortal who would inherit the power of all realms, both divine and damned. A soul that could rewrite the Fateweave. You were that soul. But they couldn't kill you. So they buried you in stories, scattered your pieces across lifetimes. And I... I stayed behind to remember. To wait."
Yeo stepped back. "You're saying I've lived this before?"
"Not lived. Endured. But this time, the spark is different. This time you hold the Fangs of Rebirth. And that means you've claimed more than power. You've claimed choice."
Lirael lifted her hand, and from the floor rose a shard of crystal—half-shattered, humming with a language Yeo didn't recognize but felt.
"The First Fragment," she whispered. "The gods fractured their memory to protect it. This is one of nine pieces. If you gather them all, you will restore the Forgotten Codex—the truth of your origin. And theirs."
Yeo reached out, and as his fingers brushed the shard, pain exploded in his head—visions of fire, chains, and an endless throne of bones.
He collapsed.
Lirael knelt beside him, her voice now a whisper in the storm raging through his mind.
"Be warned, Yeo. Each piece you claim will wake them faster. You walk the path of memory now. And memory is the sharpest blade."
Darkness claimed him.
But somewhere within it, a flame began to burn—
Not just of power.
Of purpose.