Chapter 20: Trail of Quiet Flame
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The forest no longer whispered.
It watched.
In the fading forest Kael was going, with his cloak wet with dew, but treading lightly and surely. His body, was healed, more or less. And yet his soul was still throbbing with shrine-born echoes and impress of Crimson Core Stage I.
> The Blind Knight is out there.
The Pale Flame has moved.
He could feel it now, like a second sun rising far behind the clouds.
All the birds that never had sung.
All of the beasts that did not howl.
It was the silence of a world that would not breathe.
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By the third day, Kael passed a broken signpost.
It once bore the name of a hamlet… burned away long ago. Only the charred post remained.
Beside it, a pile of bones.
Human.
Recently cleaned.
The fingers of Kael closed on his sword. His book did not have to tell him what took place here. He was familiar with the symptoms.
Divine purification.
The Pale Flame had moved through.
And whoever lived here… no longer did.
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He set up camp in the hollow of a tree near a dry creekbed. As dusk fell, the air pulsed faintly with the aftertaste of holy fire.
Kael sharpened his blade in silence.
The book sat beside him, inert.
He didn't open it. He didn't need to.
Instead, his thoughts drifted, not to the relic, nor the ruins.
But to a voice he hadn't heard in years.
> "You're always gonna break first, Kael. Not 'cause you're weak… but 'cause you care too much."
He frowned.
That memory wasn't from the battlefield.
It was from the orphanage.
From someone who used to share his food even when Kael had none.
He never saw them again after the orphanage burned down.
He thought they'd died.
But something inside whispered:
> What if they didn't?
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As the night deepened, Kael stood and faced the stars.
He could feel the Pale Flame again, closer than ever.
And yet, even as the world turned against him…
The thought that someone from before all of this might still be alive?
That haunted him more than the flames ever could.
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End of Chapter 20
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