The Memory Keeper’s Oath

They didn't speak of what happened in the vault.

Not immediately.

Ashling, pale and worn, had returned to silence. Her eyes shimmered with silver still, not quite human. She walked slower now—not out of pain, but reverence. Every step seemed calculated, as if her body carried not just her weight but someone else's history.

Lys watched her carefully.

Not as a mother. Not as a guardian.

But as the only one left who still remembered Keiran with pain and love tangled together.

By the fifth night, Ashling asked a question.

"Do you think the world deserves to remember him?"

Lys was cutting roots in the quiet field near Keiran's Rest. The sprout had grown strange in recent days—its leaves shimmering faintly at night, curling toward moonlight even when clouds thickened. It had begun to hum.

Not in words.

In remembrance.

Lys paused. "Deserve?" she echoed. "No. But it needs to."

Ashling sat cross-legged, arms wrapped around her knees. "Why?"

Lys's hands trembled slightly as she placed the roots into the satchel. She looked up toward the stars, just as one of the twin moons—Ashrah, the darker one—edged subtly closer to its counterpart.

"Because forgetting him," Lys said, "is what turned the world into this. He was proof a soul could return and still choose kindness. And they buried that. Twisted it."

Ashling looked down at her palms. Pale blue veins shimmered just beneath her skin now, like rivers of rune-silver.

A gift?

A scar?

No one knew yet.

They left the next morning.

Not to wander. Not to hide.

They had a destination.

The Sanctum of Embers—a ruin of a Concordium memory-stronghold long believed lost. It had once stored memory-cores: crystalline imprints of past lives, compressed and stored like songs in glass. Dangerous. Beautiful. Illegal since the Severance Accords.

And according to what Ashling remembered from the echo—

Keiran had left one there.

The road was not quiet.

Whispers had begun to stir across borderlands.

"A girl touched the moons."

 "A sprout sings in the garden of the Solituded."

 "The Severed One returns in dreams."

The Concordium, fractured as it was, still had ears. And someone had sent agents. Not knights. Not wardens.

Libramancers.

Collectors of thought. Devourers of forgotten names. They didn't kill with blades—they killed remembrance. Entire bloodlines could be erased with a single touch.

They were the old world's final defense.

And they were moving.

On the third day of travel, Ashling spoke again.

Her voice was different now—smoother, paced, as if Keiran's remnants were beginning to steady within her.

"Do you know what oath he swore in the Sanctum?" she asked.

Lys shook her head.

Ashling placed her hand over her heart.

"I remember only the end of it:

I am the page that cannot burn.

The footnote that refuses silence.

The echo you buried—awake again."

The Sanctum came into view by dusk on the fifth day.

Not a tower. Not a hall.

A graveyard of reflections.

Mirrors. Thousands. Each fractured.

Buried in walls, ceilings, floors.

All facing inward.

Lys shuddered.

She could see herself—dozens of versions. Older. Younger. Bloodied. Smiling. Weeping.

And in one—just one—she saw Keiran.

Not as he died.

But as he stood, one hand outstretched toward her.

Ashling walked between the mirrors without hesitation.

She knew the way.

Her fingers traced specific shards, tapping them like keys on an instrument.

The mirrors responded—glowing faintly, then rippling.

Each touch dissolved another layer of illusion.

Each step was a key.

And then—

A chamber opened.

No door. Just space, folding.

Inside: a pedestal of scorched obsidian.

On it: a single memory-core—dull, flickering, but intact.

Ashling didn't approach.

She turned to Lys.

"Only someone who knew him should carry it."

Lys stepped forward.

Her breath caught as her fingers brushed the surface of the core.

Fire.

Not heat. Not pain.

Fire of feeling.

Images. Sounds. Keiran's laughter echoing in a canyon. His voice whispering her name. His last words.

His first.

And then—

The Oath.

Spoken not with pride. But sorrow.

"If I fall again, let me fall into silence only if no one is left to carry me."

"But if even one remembers me as I was—let them know I did not die alone."

"Let them say: the Solituded One remembered us too."

Lys collapsed to her knees.

She didn't cry.

She breathed—for the first time in years.

Not because she had his memory.

Because she knew he had never let her go.

Not truly.

Ashling sat beside her and reached out, taking her hand.

"Will you carry it?" she asked.

Lys looked at the core pulsing softly in her palm.

"No," she said. "We carry him. Together."

Above them, the moons shimmered.

And somewhere deep in the wilds beyond cities and vaults and fear—

A name was spoken aloud again.

Not Keiran.

Not Sevrien.

The Solituded One.