The Fogwalker

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Fogwalker

The fog rolled in long before the sun.

Talen first noticed it while staring out his dormitory window. What had started as a faint veil clinging to the orchard now moved like a tide—slow, silent, and deliberate. Not natural. Not wind-borne. It came from the earth. From memory.

He leaned closer.

Just past the first line of apple trees, beneath the oldest branches, a shape stood still. Human—but wrong. Not a student. Not staff. Not even a traveler.

It didn't move. Didn't flinch when the breeze touched it.

Talen's candle flickered behind him.

The figure just waited.

For a long time, he didn't move either. He stood like stone, eyes narrowed, spine braced against something he didn't yet understand. But the longer he stared, the heavier his chest felt. As if he were not looking at the figure, but it was looking through him.

And not his body.

His soul.

By dawn, the fog swallowed half the orchard. Riverfort's walls stood firm, but the air inside had changed. Damp. Charged. Students whispered uneasily about dreams they couldn't remember. Doors creaked that hadn't opened in months.

In the high tower, Nyra stared out across the gray fields, her hand resting on the broken matchstick beside her bed. She didn't know how it had snapped.

Only that it had.

And what that meant.

Talen rose before breakfast.

He left quietly, boots muffled by dew. His cloak barely rustled. Not out of stealth—but instinct.

He wasn't afraid.

He was called.

Each step deeper into the orchard silenced the world. No birdsong. No rustle of wind. Only breath and fog.

And the figure.

It stood beneath the ash tree now.

Closer than before.

Taller than he expected. Its robes moved as if underwater—slow and shifting, without wind. Its face was smooth mirror-glass, silvered and faintly glowing.

When Talen stopped a few feet away, the air around him grew warmer. Not from heat.

From remembrance.

Like something inside the ground knew him. Had always known him.

He spoke first.

"Are you a guardian?"

The figure said nothing.

Its mirrored face tilted slightly.

He tried again. "Are you from the Vault?"

No response.

But the fog around them tightened. And then—

A sound.

Not words. Not breath.

A tone. Deep and vibrating, like a chime struck far beneath the soil. It filled Talen's bones before reaching his ears. The world seemed to still around it, listening.

Then came the words—not spoken, but implanted.

"I am the one you called in your forgetting."

Talen took a step back, swallowing.

"I didn't call anyone."

The mirrored head tilted again. A gesture of patience. Or pity.

Another pulse of the tone.

"You dreamed. That was enough."

The Fogwalker lifted a hand—five long fingers, tipped in shadow, lifted like a conductor before a performance.

Then it closed them into a fist.

Unfurled two.

Then three.

Then all five again.

Repeating.

A pattern.

A code.

A count.

Talen watched, confused, until words filled his chest again.

"Four mirrors remain.

One cracked.

One hidden.

One stolen.

One inside you."

He shook his head.

"I don't understand."

Another vibration, gentler this time.

"Because you asked the question.

And because she… cannot."

The fog surged.

Talen blinked—and the figure was gone.

No footsteps. No parting. Just… absence.

But the warmth remained in the soil.

The memory of its presence.

And the name that suddenly meant everything:

Valis.

Back at Riverfort, Nyra jolted awake in her chair beside the hearth. Her skin prickled.

She turned to the nightstand.

The matchstick—her matchstick—had broken clean through. It hadn't been dropped. Or crushed.

It had chosen to end.

Talen didn't return to his dorm.

He walked straight to the southern tower, heart thudding. His knuckles rapped once against Lira's door.

She opened before he could knock again.

"I saw it too," she said.

He blinked. "The Fogwalker?"

She nodded.

"I saw it… in my dream. But it wasn't silent for me. It sang. And I remembered something I didn't know I'd lost."

Together, they hurried to the high tower.

Nyra was already waiting, dressed, matchstick in hand.

She said nothing as they entered. Only pointed to the basin in the center of the floor.

Talen stepped forward and dropped a single tear into the stone.

It hissed.

And silver flame burst upward.

Not fire.

Not heat.

Just memory.

Inside the flame they saw it:

The Fogwalker.

Not one, but many.

Guardians. Watchers. Bound to the old Sight—mirrors placed across the world by the Voicekeepers.

Reflections of what the world chose to forget.

And now, they had stirred.

"The name," Talen whispered. "Valis. What is it?"

Nyra looked older in that moment than he'd ever seen her.

"Not a name," she said. "A bond. Passed down through silence. You're not the first. But you may be the last."

Lira frowned. "Then what do we do?"

Nyra stepped forward.

"You leave Riverfort. Together. You find the four mirrors. You finish what the first Voicekeeper began."

The next day, the fog cleared.

The orchard glistened. The sun returned. Life resumed.

But something had shifted.

The air was still thick with the echo of truth.

And Nyra—watching them from the tower window—knew her time as the Keeper was ending.

The next chapter would not be hers.