The path died beneath them without warning.
One moment it was stone — uneven, black-veined, but real. The next, it gave way to crooked roots and silent grass, as if the world had simply decided to stop pretending to be a road.
Silas paused at the edge.
He stared down at the earth, then up toward the nothing ahead. The trees here were taller than before, but not alive — not really. Their limbs curved like rib cages. Their bark was the color of old bone. And the leaves, what few remained, hung like damp prayer flags soaked in shadow.
The wind had died sometime ago. The silence had not.
Behind him, the carriage slowed. The creatures pulling it breathed shallowly, heads lowered, as if bowing to something unseen.
Silas turned back to the shape inside.
Virelle lifted the veil before he could call her name.
"It ends here," he said.
"It changes here," she replied.
"Same thing."
She stepped down, landing softly on the moss-covered roots. Her dress trailed behind her like smoke.
Silas scanned the treeline.
"Place to camp?"
She nodded once, pointing northeast.
"There's a ruin," she said. "A shrine. Long forgotten. We won't be welcomed."
He raised an eyebrow. "That where we're going?"
Her eyes didn't blink. "Yes."
They walked.
The forest closed in around them quickly. What light the sky had offered through the day was gone now, stolen not by clouds but by something thicker — like memory made physical. The air clung to Silas's skin, not hot, not cold, just present in a way air shouldn't be.
The path — if there had ever been one — faded beneath roots and thorngrowth. But Virelle never hesitated. She stepped as if she'd walked it before.
"How far?" Silas asked after some time.
"Not far."
He gave a dry laugh. "That's not distance."
She smiled faintly. "No. It's mercy."
Then they saw it.
A half-collapsed structure clinging to the side of a rocky incline — its bones made of carved white stone, etched in prayers now blackened by time and soot. A shrine. The arch at its entrance bore the faded name of Saint Ilven, the Hollow Walker.
Silas stopped at the edge.
The altar was cracked down the middle.
Bones lay scattered in the corner. Not fresh. Not human.
Something had lived here once.
And something else had ended it.
"We're sleeping here?" he asked.
Virelle passed him without answering. She stepped into the ruin like she was returning home.
Inside, she touched one of the altar's corners. Whispered something in a language he didn't know.
Silas followed. Warily.
The air inside was thicker. Colder. Smelled of copper and wax.
"I don't like this," he said.
"That's because it remembers."
He laid down his pack near the wall, unslung his sword, and sat on the cracked stone floor. His knees popped. His back protested.
She didn't sit.
"Saint Ilven," she said, running her fingers across the altar's surface. "Walked into the Hollow Sea and came back with silence in his mouth. He couldn't speak after. So he wrote his prayers in blood."
"That a true story?"
She looked at him. "Is any story in this land true anymore?"
He didn't answer.
The silence stretched.
Until she finally sat — not beside him, but across. Cross-legged. Her eyes on the broken icon above the altar.
"Why me?" he asked. "Why did they hire me?"
"You think I chose you?"
"I think you didn't say no."
Her voice was soft. "Because you looked like someone who wouldn't ask the wrong questions."
He met her eyes. "And now?"
"You're asking them anyway."
A moment passed.
Then she reached into her sleeve.
Pulled out a small object wrapped in cloth.
She set it on the stone between them.
"Open it," she said.
He did.
It was a tooth.
Blackened. Cracked.
Still warm.
"What is this?" he asked.
"The reason they're hunting me," she said.
"Whose is it?"
She looked at him.
And in a voice that didn't shake:
"Mine."
Silas stared at the tooth.
It lay heavy in his palm — too heavy. Like it didn't belong to the world anymore. Like it had been taken from something sacred. Or something cursed.
He turned it over slowly.
It wasn't shaped like a human molar. Longer. Sharper. The root coiled slightly at the end, like a thorn. And something faint — a pulse, a hum — tickled against the edge of his perception.
He looked up at her.
Virelle was already watching him.
"I'm going to assume," he said, "this didn't fall out on its own."
She gave him a dry, tired smile. "It was taken. By force."
"From who?"
"From what I was becoming."
He didn't speak. The wind outside had stopped. Again.
She reached across the space between them and took the tooth from his palm.
"When a demon bloodline awakens, it comes in fragments," she said. "You don't just wake up glowing and cursing the heavens. It starts with dreams. Then fever. Then the body begins to shed what it no longer needs."
She turned the tooth over between her fingers.
"This was the first piece that didn't belong to the girl I had been."
Silas's eyes didn't move from her.
"You kept it."
She nodded. "Because the next piece might be my name."
The shrine suddenly creaked.
A long, deep groan — stone shifting, somewhere deeper in the ruin. Farther back than the walls they could see. A chill ran up Silas's spine.
He was on his feet a moment later.
"Was that the wind?"
"No," she said, standing as well. "Nothing here has breath."
The torch at the far wall flickered. And then the whisper came.
Not in words.
Just sound. Memory bent around it.
It came from the broken altar.
Silas stepped forward, blade unslung, senses tight.
Virelle held up a hand.
"No," she whispered. "Let it speak."
The altar cracked.
Not visibly. But inside.
The air around it began to hum, same pitch as the tooth. Same feel — old, wounded, watching.
And then the icon of Saint Ilven — broken above the altar — began to bleed.
No wound. No source.
Just slow, black-red tears dripping down the eyes of the saint.
"Is this part of your plan?" Silas asked.
She shook her head. "No. But it's part of the place."
He stepped back. She stepped forward.
"I told you this shrine remembers," she said.
"I thought that meant stories."
"It meant oaths."
The air trembled again.
The voice came clearer this time — feminine, rasped, ancient:
"You took from the Hollow. The Hollow takes back."
Silas's sword was up.
Virelle didn't flinch.
She stepped closer to the altar.
"I paid," she said into the darkness. "I paid with everything."
"Not enough."
The shrine shuddered.
A crack split across the floor, thin as a blade, leading to the altar's base. Faint red light bled from the stone.
Silas moved to stand at her side.
"You want to tell me what this is?"
"A test," she said. "Or a memory."
"Which do we fight?"
Her eyes gleamed faintly.
"Whichever one touches us first."
And then, from the crack, a hand emerged.
Thin. Long-fingered. Wrapped in prayer bands blackened by rot.
It didn't grab.
It pointed.
Straight at Virelle.
And from behind the walls of the shrine, from the dirt beneath it, the air whispered again:
"Kneel, Oathbreaker."
The hand did not waver.
It remained pointed at Virelle, as though the earth itself had chosen her name, and now refused to forget it.
Virelle stood still, her face unreadable, but her hands were clenched at her sides — not in fear, but in something colder. Something rehearsed.
Silas stepped between her and the hand.
"Enough," he said to the shrine.
The air did not respond.
Virelle's voice was low. "It doesn't recognize you."
"Then make it."
"I can't."
He turned to her.
"You said this was a memory."
She nodded. "Memories still bite."
He looked back at the hand — now curling, twitching, like it could smell hesitation.
"What oath did you break?"
Virelle inhaled, slow.
"When I fled the Hollow Sea, I swore to Ilven that I'd never call on her name again. That I would carry no more power from the deep, and that I would never let another carry it for me."
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"I lied."
The crack widened beneath the altar. Dust fell from the ceiling above. Faint whispers now came from the very walls — layered voices, each murmuring the same word:
"Kneel…"
Silas stepped forward, placing himself fully between the altar and Virelle.
"Take her blood if you want," he said to the shrine. "But you'll have to get through me."
The light flared.
Chains of red glyphs burst from the crack, screaming up toward him.
He slashed one mid-air. It split — not with a clatter, but a cry.
He swung again, carving a path between himself and Virelle.
But the shrine wasn't attacking. Not truly.
It was testing.
Virelle's hand touched his shoulder.
"Silas," she said. "Don't."
"I don't leave people behind."
"I'm not asking you to."
He turned to her.
She was holding the tooth again.
Only now — it was glowing. Not brightly. But pulsing, like a heartbeat just beneath the surface.
"You said you weren't carrying power from the deep," he said.
"I'm not."
She looked down at the tooth.
"I buried it. And it found me again."
More voices now. The walls breathed. The floor cracked further.
Silas stepped back just as the hand lunged.
But not at Virelle.
At him.
It caught his wrist.
Not tightly. Not with pain.
Just… contact.
His vision changed.
Suddenly he was no longer in the shrine. He was underwater. Drowning in a sea of ink and eyes and forgotten names. He saw Virelle — younger, bleeding, screaming in silence. He saw a door. A ring. A saint made of worms. And a vow spoken in blood.
Then he was back.
Gasping.
On one knee.
The hand was gone.
The altar cracked in two.
And silence returned.
He looked up at Virelle.
She stepped toward him, knelt, and offered her hand.
"Are you hurt?" she asked.
He took her hand. Let her pull him up.
"No," he said. "But I think I just promised something I don't understand."
She looked toward the shattered altar.
"You're not the first."
He exhaled hard.
The shrine had stopped whispering.
But the echo in his bones would take longer to fade.
The fire was small. Pathetic, really.
Silas fed it carefully, branch by brittle branch, as if afraid it might decide to die just to spite them. The wood here didn't burn properly — it hissed, spat, and gave off smoke that clung to the skin like damp regret.
Still, it gave warmth. A little.
And that was enough.
Virelle sat across from him, legs folded beneath her, wrapped in the dark folds of her coat. Her face was turned slightly toward the flame, eyes half-lidded. Not sleeping. Just still.
She hadn't said a word since the altar cracked.
Silas didn't blame her.
He poked the fire again.
"You ever sleep?" he asked finally.
Virelle's lips curled faintly. "Not in places that whisper."
He smirked. "That's all places now."
"Exactly."
Silence again. Crackling wood. Low wind.
He let it sit for a while.
Then: "What was that vision it showed me?"
Virelle didn't look away from the fire. "Depends. What did you see?"
He hesitated. "Water. A door. You, bleeding. Something… watching."
She nodded slowly.
"Pieces of my past. Not memories. Not exactly. More like… footprints. Left behind when I ran."
"Ran from what?"
Her gaze lifted to him now.
"From what I could have been."
He studied her — the way her posture never quite relaxed, the way her fingers curled near the edge of her coat like claws half-sheathed. Always prepared to strike or vanish.
"Whatever that was," he said, "it doesn't seem like it's done with you."
"It's not," she replied. "But neither are you."
He paused. "Meaning?"
She looked down. Rolled something between her fingers — the blackened tooth again, though it was wrapped now in silk. Distant. Dormant.
"You've touched it now. The shrine. The pact. Me."
Her voice softened.
"You're part of it, whether you meant to be or not."
He didn't respond right away.
Instead, he unbuckled the bracer on his left forearm, revealing a scar. Fresh. Thin. A red sigil — not burned, not inked. Written.
He held his arm toward her.
"I didn't carve this."
Virelle reached out, touched it gently.
The rune pulsed faintly at her contact.
"It's a binding mark," she said. "Modified. Strange."
"What's it say?"
She frowned.
"It's a name."
"Yours?"
"No," she said.
Then, very softly: "Mine was burned away a long time ago."
They fell silent.
The wind stirred.
Above them, the stars were distant. Too distant. Like they were watching from another sky.
Silas lay back on the stone floor, folding one arm under his head.
"You don't strike me as the type to run from anything," he said.
"I don't run," she whispered. "I retreat tactically."
He smirked. "With flair, I assume."
She didn't laugh. But her lips moved like she might have.
Then, after a long silence:
"I didn't think you'd stay, Silas."
"I didn't think I'd care."
He closed his eyes.
She did not.
Instead, she turned her gaze toward the corner of the shrine, where the shadows still hadn't fully dispersed.
And quietly — too quietly for Silas to hear — she said:
"Please don't."
The fire was out.
Not dying. Not low. Out.
Silas opened his eyes to cold stone and darker silence.
He blinked. Sat up slowly.
No embers. No scent of smoke. No glow from the coals. Just blackness — thick and unmoving — wrapping the shrine like a wet shroud.
He reached for his blade instinctively. Found it.
Stood.
The crack in the altar was still there. The air around it was cold enough to sting his skin.
"Virelle?" he said softly.
No answer.
"Virelle."
He turned.
She was gone.
No footprints.
No sound.
Just the shrine. And the dark.
And then: a sound.
Not outside. Not distant.
Inside the shrine.
Breathing.
It wasn't her.
It was wrong.
He turned toward the far end of the ruin — where the shadows had never fully dispersed.
A shape stood there now.
Not Virelle.
Not alive.
The form was tall. Slender. Hooded in a robe that hadn't been woven in any living century. Its hands were wrong — too long. The joints reversed. One of them clutched something.
A candle.
Unlit.
The figure stepped forward.
No sound.
Silas raised his sword.
"Say a name," he said. "Any name. Now."
The figure paused.
Then it spoke.
Not in its own voice.
In hers.
"Silas… why do you always wake before me?"
His grip tightened. "That's not you."
The figure tilted its head.
"You never stayed this long before."
He stepped back.
The blade trembled faintly.
"You told me you'd walk to the Hollow Sea for me."
"I don't know you," he hissed.
"You loved me."
It stepped into a sliver of light.
And for a split second — it looked like her.
Not Virelle.
Another woman. Pale. Freckled. Blonde hair matted with soot.
Dead.
Very, very dead.
Silas's eyes went wide.
He didn't breathe.
The sword dipped slightly.
"You left me there."
"No," he said.
"You turned your back."
"No—"
"And now you hold her hand."
"Shut up!"
The candle in its hand flared.
The face shifted. Twisted. Turned inside out and burned away like paper in flame. The thing screamed — not from pain, but in triumph — and lunged.
Silas struck.
The blade hit nothing.
Just air.
He stumbled. Caught himself. Turned.
The shrine was empty.
The fire sparked back to life — a flicker, weak but warm.
He was alone again.
A whisper behind him:
"Not alone."
He spun.
Virelle stood at the doorway.
She looked pale. Eyes narrowed.
"You saw her?" she asked.
He nodded.
"Which one?"
He didn't answer.
She nodded anyway.
"They come when you get close," she said softly. "To me. To what I carry."
Silas lowered his sword.
"I don't think I like your dreams."
"You were awake."
She stepped closer.
Placed a hand on his chest — not gently, not warmly. Just real.
"I told you not to stay."
"I've never listened well."
She sighed.
The fire crackled.
Outside, the stars returned.
But one of them flickered — not white.
Red.
Watching.