"When the sky forgets your name, walk until the stars remember."
The new world greeted them with silence—not the emptiness of the Echo, but a stillness full of waiting. The sky overhead was a deep lavender, shot through with golden ripples that moved slowly like ink in water. Two suns floated low on the horizon, one pale and glassy, the other cracked like a dying eye. Between them stretched a shimmering field that might have once been a sea.
The Sea of Forgotten Skies, Thalin had whispered when they arrived, his voice hushed as if fearful the very wind might steal it.
Aelric stood at the edge of a vast dune of iridescent ash, gazing out at the sea—not water, but a vast mirror of shifting sky. Clouds drifted below him, reflecting constellations no longer known, stars that hadn't shone for millennia. The moment his boot touched the surface, the sky rippled.
Nyara growled low in her throat. "This place remembers everything. But none of it is true anymore."
Liora stepped to his side. "Then what are we walking on?"
Aelric said nothing.
Because beneath their feet were echoes of skies long gone. Every step stirred a memory—whole worlds that had forgotten themselves.
Echoes in the Tides
They walked across the shifting sea for what felt like hours. At times, their reflections distorted—Thalin's became a figure cloaked in shadow, with stars in place of eyes. Liora's flickered between her and a younger version, eyes wide with a grief that no longer belonged to her. Even Aelric's reflection lagged behind, then suddenly turned to face him.
It watched.
"Don't look too long," Thalin warned, panting slightly. "Your reflection will learn more than you do."
"Can it harm us?" Aelric asked.
Thalin didn't answer.
But the sky beneath them churned.
And something moved in the depths.
The Starship Leviathan
Near what passed for nightfall—though the suns never truly set—they discovered wreckage. A vast structure half-submerged in the mirrored surface: a leviathan of polished obsidian and corroded star-metal. Spires of silver had burst from its hull like bone through flesh. Faint light blinked along its spine in a language none of them recognized.
They climbed aboard cautiously. The air crackled.
Liora paused beside a melted corridor wall. "This isn't just a ship. It's... a tomb."
Thalin nodded. "Or a prison."
The corridors inside were curved, seamless. Voices echoed from within—voices not their own. Laughter. Screams. Aelric could hear a lullaby his mother once sang. Then a voice he didn't know whispering his name in reverence... or in warning.
They passed chambers lined with floating crystals—each one pulsing softly. One cracked as Aelric passed, releasing a breath of air and a fragment of a memory not his own.
A child watching stars fall in reverse.
A war fought in whispers.
A god bound in silver thread.
"What was this place?" Liora muttered.
Nyara stopped before a great sealed arch. "Ask her."
The arch opened.
And inside stood a figure wrapped in robes of molten sky.
The Cartographer of Lost Worlds
She did not speak as they entered. Her face shimmered between identities—young, old, human, other. Her eyes, though, remained the same: pale grey, with flecks of comet fire.
"I am Vesshara," she said at last. "The last Cartographer."
Aelric bowed his head. "We're seeking the path forward. Toward the Stargrave Expanse."
She gestured behind her. The wall unfurled into an endless scroll of shifting constellations—some known, many erased. "Then you must walk the Forgotten Skies. And survive their memory."
Thalin leaned forward. "What is this sea? Why does it hold the sky?"
Vesshara's voice was almost mournful. "Because these skies were once loved—and then abandoned. Every time a people forgets their stories, their skies come here. They live on, beneath the Sea."
Aelric stepped closer to the map. "Can we cross it?"
"You must," she said. "But not with strength. With remembrance. You must remember a truth that was never yours. Or be lost."
The Storm of Names
They left the Leviathan as pale wind rose over the mirrored expanse.
Storm clouds gathered above them—not grey or black, but brilliant white, filled with names. Names rained from the sky like hail—spoken, chanted, shouted.
Each drop was a name that had once been known: gods, heroes, beasts, children. The very identities of things.
Aelric raised a shield of starlight, but each name struck it with uncanny force, vibrating through his bones. Liora shielded Thalin as he staggered.
"I can't— I can't forget them all," Thalin gasped. "They're inside my head—burning!"
Nyara leapt in front of them, howling. Her voice cut through the storm like a bell, and for a moment the names paused.
Aelric stepped forward into the storm.
The names battered him.
He let them.
He remembered them.
A child lost in the firelands.
A song once sung by the Windcallers of Vhar.
A last breath taken under an unmarked moon.
And as he did, the storm parted.
The sky fell quiet.
And the sea whispered its approval.
The Skyborn Tree
They reached an island—a fragment of rock rising from the mirrored sea. At its heart stood a massive tree, leafless, its branches tangled with stars. The roots drank from the sky-sea, and the bark shimmered with runes.
It was not native to this world.
"It's a Skyborn Tree," Thalin breathed. "They only grow where worlds intersect. And where time begins to heal."
Aelric stepped to the base of the trunk. "Then this is where we decide."
Liora frowned. "Decide what?"
"To let go," he said, "of the world we knew. And accept what we've become."
One by one, they each placed a hand to the bark.
Visions surged.
Of past failures. Of futures unclaimed. Of moments they wished to forget—and could not.
And then the tree began to bloom.
Leaves of glass, of light, of stories untold.
And in its reflection—beneath the mirrored sea—a path opened.
The Stargrave Expanse called to them.
The Promise Ahead
As they prepared to cross into the final leg of their journey, Aelric stood once more at the edge of the sea.
Liora sat nearby, sharpening her blade with a quiet reverence. "This place was never meant to be found."
"Maybe that's why we're here," Aelric said. "To remember what others forgot."
Thalin approached, holding a scroll that flickered in and out of existence. "This realm won't stay open long. The cartographer said it's closing. We have days—maybe less."
Nyara joined them last. "Something stirs on the other side. Something that waits for you."
Aelric didn't flinch. "Let it wait."
He turned toward the blooming tree.
Behind him, the sea began to shift again—no longer reflecting stars, but eyes. Watching.
He said nothing.
But in his heart, a fire began to burn brighter.
The path into the Stargrave Expanse would not be easy.
There, he would face what no Starborn ever had.
There, the sky itself might turn against him.
But he would walk it.
And the stars would remember.
~to be continued