The Town Beneath the Ash

The land east of Valemire changed slowly.

Fields gave way to cragged hills. Then came the ashlands, gray soil where nothing grew, where the air felt dry even when it snowed. The wind here carried the scent of iron and old stone. No birds flew above. No fires burned below.

Ryuji moved quietly, wrapped in a heavy cloak. Velen had given him a second flame crystal, and it hung from a chain inside his coat, warm against his chest. It pulsed with soft light, a heartbeat to follow through the cold.

He didn't ride.

Too much noise.

Instead, he walked.

Step by step.

Until the shape of a ruined tower broke the horizon, cracked like a tooth against the sky.

Venterium's Crossroads.

The name echoed in his head like a forgotten prayer.

The path leading to the town had been covered by time. Trees, stripped of bark and life, lined the road like blackened sentries. The snow here didn't fall gently, it hung in the air, waiting, clinging to skin and breath.

As he approached the ruins, he saw what was left of a gate.

Not a wall.

Not a defense.

Just two stone pillars, carved with Dominion sigils too old to match anything used now. Between them, a wide road dipped downward into the heart of the town.

Or what remained.

Half the buildings were collapsed. Roofs fallen inward, doors torn from hinges. Ash clung to everything. It mixed with snow, forming gray powder that softened every step.

It was quiet.

But not dead.

Ryuji stepped into the town and paused. The buildings were not all broken. Some had been burned. Others… sealed. Heavy iron across doors. Black wax around windows. Runes carved into wood with careful hands.

Containment. Not destruction.

Something had happened here. Not just silence. A warning.

He walked further.

A small square lay at the town's center, with a cracked fountain and several toppled benches. In its middle stood a statue, half-missing, covered in moss and frost. Only the base remained readable.

"To She Who Watched The Turning."

Ryuji read it twice.

He had seen that phrase before, in Mirael's journal. An old term for Liraen. A poet's title.

Something pulled him forward.

Behind the statue was a long building. Its roof was still intact, though parts of the wall had crumbled inward. The door was open, but the inside was dark.

He entered slowly.

Dust and ash stirred underfoot. The room was filled with broken shelves, old banners, and a large table still holding fragments of faded parchment. Nothing looked recent.

He scanned the floor.

Then he saw it, beneath the table, half-covered by a fallen beam. A small box, wooden, with metal corners. Not locked, but sealed with a wax crest he had seen only once before.

The Ninth Oath.

He knelt and gently touched the box.

The wax crumbled.

Inside, the air was dry. Preserved.

A rolled letter. Wrapped in black thread.

He unwrapped it and began to read.

"To the one who finds this"

"I was the last to speak the Pact, and the first to question it."

"We built it from fear, not hope. We wanted peace, but forged it with silence. Each of us gave something. But one of us...one of us gave too little."

"They will erase me. Maybe they already have. But if these words survive, remember this...Truth does not wither in fire. It waits in ash." - Liraen Solma.

Ryuji sat in stillness.

The letter trembled slightly in his fingers.

Not from fear, but from the weight of what it meant.

She had known. Known the Pact was flawed. Known someone inside the Ninth had held secrets too deep to speak aloud.

He closed the letter gently and placed it back into the box. But as he did, he noticed something tucked into the lid.

A second paper. Smaller.

A map.

Hand-drawn.

Lines faded but clear enough.

A path leading from Venterium… further east. Toward the mountains. Marked with one word...

"Sanctum."

Ryuji stared at it.

If this was real, if Liraen had built a place to hold the truth, to store what the Pact had hidden, then it still waited.

Frozen. Forgotten.

He rose to his feet.

Snow drifted through a crack in the roof above. The wind had changed. Softer now.

He stepped outside.

The town remained still. But it felt different.

Less like a tomb.

More like a threshold.

That night, he set up a small camp near the broken fountain. He didn't sleep much. He stared at the map by firelight, his thoughts tangled.

Liraen had not run.

She had chosen this place. And she had left something behind, for someone to find.

Now that someone was him.

As dawn broke and the ash clouds thinned just slightly, Ryuji packed his gear.

His eyes turned east, toward the mountains where the last thread of Liraen's story pointed.