The moment Liora stepped away from the fire, Kael knew.
He didn't see her. Didn't hear her. But his body responded as if touched by a stormfront an ancient instinct whispering that something precious was slipping through his fingers.
Again.
He glanced across the dying embers. Ash was snoring softly. Maren stirred in a dream, brow furrowed. Sarya sat beside him, eyes closed but not asleep.
"Did you see Liora?" he whispered.
Sarya didn't open her eyes. "She's gone again, isn't she?"
Kael stood. "I'll be back."
Sarya said nothing, but her hand brushed against his briefly permission or warning, he couldn't tell.
He followed the footprints only he could see. Light as falling leaves, Liora's trail wound between ancient stones, weaving deeper into the outer ring of ruins. The further he walked, the colder the air became. And the closer his heart crawled to dread.
Then he heard it voices, distant and inhuman.
He slowed, keeping to the broken remains of a crumbled archway. Shadows folded around him as easily as a second skin. Centuries of war had taught him the art of disappearing, of listening.
Two cloaked figures stood at the heart of a forgotten grove. Between them; Liora.
Kael's blood went ice.
"Child of the Flame…" the taller figure said with reverence. "You've come."
Kael could see the edge of her profile tense, conflicted.
"I said I would," Liora answered. "Though it's getting harder to stay unnoticed."
They suspect nothing, Kael realized bitterly. Because they never thought she would betray them.
"Kael… his dreams grow louder. He remembers more with each shard. He's getting too close."
Kael barely registered the breath he held.
The other figure stepped forward, offering something wrapped in violet silk. Liora took it carefully, unwrapping it to reveal a shard, another memory fragment.
Kael's pulse roared in his ears.
"She's feeding them our path," he muttered under his breath. "Giving them what we bleed to find."
But as he watched, he saw something else in her face regret. Conflict. A wound inside her that hadn't stopped bleeding.
"I can't stall them forever," she said. "They'll reach the prison in a few days."
"Then you must decide," the agent replied. "Where your loyalty burns brightest"
"with the fallen king, or the world he may yet doom."
Kael flinched.
They knew. They feared him.
And Liora… she hadn't said no.
The agents vanished like smoke, leaving Liora alone in the moonlight, hand clenched around the shard, face carved from pain.
Kael stepped back slowly, breath sharp.
He didn't confront her.
Not yet.
He couldn't not when he didn't know if the next word from her lips would be betrayal… or love.
He returned to camp in silence.
Sarya watched him emerge from the darkness, eyes sharp. "You followed her."
He nodded once. "She's meeting with the Obsidian Order."
Sarya's body went still. "Did they see you?"
"No."
"Did she?"
He hesitated.
"No."
Sarya rose, voice low. "What do we do?"
Kael stared into the fire, his mind aflame with everything he had seen, felt, remembered. Trust had never come easily. But with Liora, he'd let the walls fall and now he stood in the ruin of that gamble.
"We wait," he said, eyes hardening. "She'll return. And when she does… I want to hear it from her."
Sarya folded her arms, whispering, "You still care."
"I do." His voice cracked. "Which is why this hurts more than anything the Order ever did."
The fire crackled.
The night deepened.
And behind them, Liora walked back into the light mask in place, silence wrapped around her like armor, unaware that the man she loved now held her secret like a blade to his own throat.