Lenna stood in the moonlight like a ghost carved from fog.
She was barely more than shadow, but her eyes held weight. Memory. Kaelen knelt slowly, heart thudding like a war drum.
"You're real," she whispered.
The girl tilted her head. "Not for long. They're coming."
"Who?"
Lenna didn't answer. She pointed instead — toward the window.
Kaelen turned just as the wind outside went still.
And then came the sound.
A low hum — ancient, mournful, wrong. Like a funeral bell tolling underwater.
Tareth burst into the room, sword already drawn.
"Get back," he growled. "It's here."
---
The creature that stepped through the broken inn wall was not of flesh.
It wore a shape like a man — but hollowed. Skin made of parchment. Eyes like melted wax. Its mouth hung open, but it didn't speak. Instead, it reached for Lenna.
Tareth threw a flame-sigiled dagger.
It passed through the creature.
"Memory-walker," he spat. "This one's not real. It's a reminder."
Kaelen stepped forward, fists clenched.
"She's not a reminder," she said. "She's real. She remembers."
The Hollowborn turned its head toward her. The air went cold.
Kaelen's spiral sigil burned to life across her skin.
Tareth shouted, "Kaelen—"
But she was already moving.
---
Kaelen dropped to her knees beside Lenna, pressed her marked hand to the child's heart, and spoke her name aloud.
"Lenna Marrow, of Graymere Pass. You lived. You laughed. You mattered."
The spiral mark on her wrist flared — gold and violet light cascading through the room.
The Hollowborn shrieked, its body unraveling, form scattering like ash in the wind.
And then — silence.
---
When Kaelen opened her eyes, the world had changed.
The inn's light had returned — warm, flickering, alive. The walls no longer groaned under the weight of forgetting. Outside, she could hear the distant murmur of voices — faint, like echoes returning to a long-forgotten room.
Lenna stood taller now, no longer a shadow.
"You remembered me," she said softly.
Kaelen smiled through tears. "Someone had to."
The girl leaned forward and touched Kaelen's forehead.
A spark passed between them — a sliver of something old and powerful. Then Lenna was gone.
Not vanished. Not erased.
Just… at peace.
---
Tareth helped her to her feet.
"You anchored her," he said, quiet with awe. "By name alone."
Kaelen nodded, trembling. "It felt like I pulled her out of the Hollow itself."
"You did. That was no echo. That was rescue."
He looked at her — truly looked — for the first time.
"I thought you were just another bearer. Another mark." He shook his head. "But you're not. The sigil didn't choose you."
"You chose the sigil."
---
Outside, dawn broke over Graymere Pass. For the first time in decades, the village stayed.
Kaelen looked down at her wrist.
The spiral mark had changed.
Now, Lenna's name was etched faintly within it — part of the pattern.
Kaelen smiled.
"I'll remember all of them."
And far beyond the mountains, in a place where no maps reached, the Hollow God stirred.
Its silence cracked like ice.
And for the first time in a thousand years, it remembered a name it had erased.
---
End of Act I
Kaelen is no longer running from her past.
Now she's hunting the future.