Chapter 5.The Nameless Past.

Chapter. 5:

The Nameless Past.

Errin stood before the tree, the old storyteller's words lingering in his mind like the last echoes of a dream. Not everything that is forgotten is lost.

The valley had accepted him without question, but now he felt something shifting beneath the surface, like a memory stirring in the depths of a still pond. He reached out, pressing his palm against the tree's smooth bark. A sudden chill coursed through him, and for a fleeting moment, he wasn't standing in the valley at all.

A city loomed before him—tall spires cutting into the sky, streets lined with faces both familiar and unknown. A name rose to his lips, unspoken, and just as quickly as the vision had come, it was gone. He stumbled back, breath unsteady.

The old woman watched him with quiet patience.

"You saw something," she said. It wasn't a question.

Errin nodded. "I… don't know what it was."

She sighed, brushing her fingers over the tree's bark. "The valley does not only remember—it shows. But only to those who listen."

He hesitated. "What does it want me to remember?"

The storyteller chuckled, though there was no humor in it. "That is not for me to say."

Errin clenched his jaw. He had spent his life chasing knowledge, seeking answers in books and histories. But the valley offered no pages to turn, no words neatly arranged in ink. It offered only silence, and the unsettling truth that some answers could not be sought—they had to be felt.

As the mist thinned and the morning sun filtered through the trees, Errin turned away from the clearing, his mind restless. The valley had begun to whisper to him, and he was no longer sure he wanted to hear what it had to say.

But it was too late. The past had already begun to surface.