The stair behind them vanished.
Not closed.
Not sealed.
Vanished.
As if it had never been carved.
Silas looked back once.
The field where the village had waited now stretched wide and dead — as though years had passed since they first walked it.
No sounds. No watchers.
No masks.
The obelisk still stood.
But it was cracked down the middle — a hairline fracture that hadn't been there before. The names carved into its surface had blurred.
Except one.
Na'vira.
Still clear.
Still fresh.
Virelle knelt beside the base of the stone.
There, in the dust, someone had written with their finger.
"I came first."
Silas crouched beside her.
"What does it mean?"
She shook her head.
"It wasn't me."
"No," he said. "But it was you."
They rose together.
Walked through the village.
Doors hung loose. Tables sat overturned, meals uneaten. Fires long cold.
But no blood.
No bodies.
Just… gone.
And here and there, left in soot or scratched into walls:
Three words.
"She remembers differently."
At the village's edge, a trail led east — deeper into the Blight.
Not one made by travelers.
One carved through the earth.
Burnt edges.
Scorched sigils left like breadcrumbs.
Silas stepped toward it.
"Do we follow?"
Virelle nodded.
"She's the one I left behind when I chose not to finish the vow."
Silas looked at her.
"And now she's walking it."
Virelle didn't answer.
She just stepped forward.
The wind stirred.
And behind them, the village's last door slammed shut on its own.
The wind turned metallic.
The trail of scorched sigils ran ahead like a vein through the dead land — symbols etched not with ink or chalk, but with heat. The earth itself had cracked where she passed.
Silas and Virelle moved quickly, but not carelessly.
Even without speaking, the air told them they were behind. Hours. Maybe days.
Time twisted in the wake of magic like hers.
They reached the tower-town at dusk.
It had no name. Most places this close to the Blight didn't bother anymore. The town was a ring of broken walls and leaning houses built around a spiraled stone tower, once an outpost of the Crown.
The sky above it flickered. Not lightning.
Smoke.
They approached the outer gate, or what was left of it.
Half of it still stood. The other half had been blown inward.
Not with siege.
With precision.
The path into the town was lined with scorch marks, clawed footprints, and symbols etched in glassed stone. The markings weren't random.
They were made to be seen.
Silas drew his sword.
Virelle didn't draw anything — but her eyes had begun to glow faintly red.
"She's not hiding."
"No," Virelle said. "She wants me to see."
They entered the town.
Every third building had burned.
Others were intact — but open, hollowed out.
No blood.
No bodies.
Just absence, like the village before.
Until they reached the square.
There, they found him.
A man. Kneeling.
Eyes covered with a cloth soaked in red.
Skin marked with the same sigil Virelle bore — but inverted, as if drawn in a mirror.
He heard them approach.
"Not her," he said.
Silas slowed. "You mean Virelle?"
The man shook.
"Looked like her. But not… not her."
Virelle knelt.
"What did she do?"
The man whispered:
"She asked me my name."
"Then she burned it out of me."
He trembled.
"She said she needed the space."
Silas crouched beside them.
"Did she leave a message?"
The man lifted his blindfold just slightly.
Beneath the cloth, his eyes had turned silver.
And carved into the flesh of his brow, in deep rune-scripts:
"She left you behind, Na'vira."
The silver-eyed man would say no more.
Not because he couldn't.
Because something had ended the part of him that knew how to speak truths.
Virelle left a glyph on his forehead — not to undo the damage, but to preserve the warning. She stood in the square long after he fell into shallow sleep, her hand against the scorched stone.
"She's harvesting names," she said at last.
Silas didn't ask what that meant.
He already knew better.
They moved on — deeper into the town, following the path of ruined script and crackled cobble.
The tower still stood.
Half-collapsed.
But not silent.
Voices echoed faintly from within.
Not shouts.
Whispers.
Layered.
Virelle stiffened.
Silas noticed. "What?"
"I know that voice."
They entered.
The stairwell that once wrapped the tower's inner wall had collapsed.
The floor had fractured inward, opening into a pit.
But from its depths — music.
Strings. Dissonant.
And beneath that —
A voice.
"Silas."
He froze.
"You held my hand in the dark."
Virelle's breath hitched.
"You told me I was not made to be chained."
The voice continued.
Calm. Certain.
Hers.
But not her.
"You kissed my name into my skin."
"Then turned your mouth against my oath."
Virelle stepped toward the pit.
"Don't," Silas warned.
But she leaned in.
And the voice stopped.
The silence was louder than anything else that followed.
Then—
Another voice.
Feminine.
Weaker.
Human.
From the side alcove.
They turned fast, blades half-drawn.
A girl — no older than twenty — stood inside a collapsed prayer chamber. Dust-coated. Eyes wide. One foot burned to ash.
She opened her mouth.
And in Virelle's voice, said:
"If you're listening, I've already made the first cut."
"You'll find the second in his blood."
The girl collapsed.
Alive. Breathing.
But her lips were charred black where the voice had left her.
Silas looked to Virelle.
"What's the second?"
Virelle whispered:
"I don't know."
And she was lying.
Silas had never feared silence.
He'd fought in it. Slept in it. Killed in it.
But this silence — the one after the girl's voice fell still — was something else.
A silence left behind.
Virelle crouched by the girl, fingers pressed gently to her pulse. The breath still moved. Slow. Weak. Present.
But her eyes…
Empty.
Not unconscious.
Emptied.
"She won't wake," Virelle said.
"She gave what she was made to give."
Silas looked down at his hands.
They were steady.
But they didn't feel like his.
"You'll find the second in his blood," the voice had said.
He whispered, "You think she meant me."
Virelle stood.
"She didn't mean anything else."
She moved toward him slowly, eyes sharp — not suspicious, not cold.
Searching.
"Do you remember anything?" she asked.
"Anything strange?"
He nearly laughed.
"Stranger than this?"
She didn't blink.
"Before. Before we met."
He paused.
"There's time I can't account for. After the war. When I was near the Hollow Coast. Woke up in a shrine. Alone."
She stepped closer.
"Show me."
He hesitated.
Then nodded.
He pulled back the collar of his shirt.
His left shoulder, high up, near the base of the neck — a patch of skin marked with layered scar tissue.
Not new.
But not old enough.
Virelle touched it.
The scar pulsed.
Not with pain.
With sound.
A single whispered word echoed from it.
"Yes."
Virelle stepped back like she'd been struck.
Her mouth parted.
"That's not a scar."
He touched it. "Then what—?"
"It's a vowmark."
He froze.
"You said I never swore one."
"You didn't."
She looked up at him.
"She did."
Silas stared at her.
"You're telling me I carry a vow that your other self made?"
Virelle nodded.
"She marked you before I ever knew your name."
And beneath her breath, barely audible, she added:
"And I think she means to collect it."
They left the tower-town in silence.
The wind followed them now — low, constant, threading through ruined fields and broken cairns like a whisper trying to remember its language.
Silas walked slightly ahead.
Not because he meant to.
Because he felt watched.
From within.
The mark on his shoulder hadn't burned.
Hadn't ached.
It had simply… warmed.
Like a hand resting just beneath the skin.
Not his.
Not Virelle's.
Hers.
The other her.
He stopped walking.
Virelle slowed behind him.
"What is it?"
He turned slightly. Didn't face her fully.
"I need to know what it means. The vow."
She was quiet.
Then:
"It depends on how she sealed it."
"You don't know?"
"I've never had to ask," she said softly. "Because I don't mark people. Not like that."
Silas laughed, hollow.
"Ironic."
He reached to touch the mark.
And when his fingers brushed it—
A sound.
Not a word.
A chime.
Low. Clear. Resounding through bone.
He stumbled forward a step.
Virelle caught him — hands on his chest, steadying.
He looked up at her, breath sharp.
"I think it just rang."
She nodded slowly. "Then the vow has begun to collect."
Silas straightened, jaw tightening.
"Collect what?"
She didn't answer.
So the mark did.
Another pulse.
And a memory.
Not one Silas recognized.
But one he felt.
"You said you'd bleed for me," a voice whispered in his mind.
"Now show me how much."
Virelle looked up.
"I think she's coming."
Silas nodded.
"Then let her."
But as they walked again, the mark flared.
And somewhere — far off, not in any direction that could be pointed — a bell rang.
Not in a tower.
Not in a town.
In the bone.
And the oath smiled.