Chapter 10: The Echoed Trail
The first thing Kael forgot was his name.
It didn't happen all at once. There was no jarring absence, no sharp snap of memory broken. It was subtler than that—like a stone sinking slowly into deep water, its edges distorted until it became part of the ripple instead of the weight.
He had walked for a full hour before he realized he hadn't thought of himself as Kael at all. Just a shape. A presence. A fire that moved and thought and burned.
When he stopped and looked into the reflection of a shallow pool beside the road, he saw his face—but for a moment, it didn't feel like his.
What was your name, again?
The voice came not from inside him, like Solvane's growl or Veyrith's whispers—but around him. Beneath the leaves. Behind the water. Carried on the wind like an echo spoken by something ancient and exhausted.
Kael blinked once.
His hand hovered just above the surface of the water.
The reflection shifted.
A younger version of himself stared back—soot on his cheek, hair shorter, eyes wider. Dressed in the ceremonial armor of the royal line. Prince of a kingdom that now wanted him dead.
He took a slow step back.
The image held for a moment. Then, rippled.
Gone.
Kael didn't sleep that night.
He tried. He even built a fire—though he no longer trusted them fully. The flames twisted in colors they shouldn't. Sometimes the light flickered in the shape of masks or open mouths. Once, he saw what looked like a hand reach through the fire and pull something out of his shadow.
He stopped looking after that.
But sleep didn't come.
Because the moment his eyes closed, he saw places he didn't remember walking. He saw faces he had never met. A girl with braids kneeling beside a grave. A boy running through fields of red lilies. A man with one eye sitting in silence beside a fire, carving names into his arms.
None of them were Kael.
And yet he felt them like scars under his skin.
By morning, Kael reached a stretch of road overgrown with bramble and frost. There were no visible signs of passage, but the crows were back—circling high above the trees, crying with shrill voices that sounded almost human.
They were leading him again.
He followed.
Soon, the forest broke into a clearing dotted with the husks of ruined statues—half-buried stone heads, limbs cracked and moss-eaten. They must've been saints once, or kings, or gods. Now they were little more than silhouettes of something long forgotten.
Kael stepped into the center of the clearing, where a single altar still stood.
It was cracked, weathered, and carved with a single glyph: a spiral folding inward.
He didn't recognize it.
But it felt like it recognized him.
A sound.
He turned.
Someone stood at the edge of the clearing.
Not cloaked in godflame, nor shrouded in frost. Just… there. A tall man with no visible weapon, no sigil, no crown. He wore a robe of tattered parchment and bone, and his face was hidden behind a veil of stitched vellum, tight across the eyes.
He didn't move. Didn't speak.
But Kael's vision blurred.
And suddenly—
He was somewhere else.
A marketplace. Laughter. The smell of spice.
Kael turned—but he wasn't himself.
He was shorter. Younger. Running, barefoot, through a crowd he didn't recognize. A woman's voice called after him, warm and teasing.
"Kael! You'll drop the bread again!"
He stopped in confusion.
This wasn't real.
It wasn't a memory he owned.
And yet—he remembered.
The crowd faded.
The smell burned away.
Back in the clearing, Kael stumbled and dropped to one knee, gasping.
The man with the veil stepped closer, though his feet made no sound.
Kael's vision swam. He grabbed his sword instinctively, but his hand felt heavy. His memories were moving—shuffling themselves without permission.
"Who are you?" he growled, voice hoarse.
The veiled man finally spoke.
His voice was thin and careful, like a scribe dictating the last lines of a dying prayer.
"I am the one who remembers what others fear."
Kael rose unsteadily.
"You're a Remnancer."
"No," the man said. "I am their end."
Kael's blade flared with violet flame, fire laced with lies. It coiled up the steel like breath over a corpse. But the veiled man didn't flinch.
"You carry two," he said softly. "Wrath and deceit. A powerful chorus. But unstable."
Kael took a step forward.
"If you think you can take them—"
"I have no interest in your burdens. I've come to offer relief."
He raised a pale hand.
And Kael's mind shattered.
For one terrible second, Kael forgot everything.
Not just where he was. Not just his name.
He forgot what it meant to be human.
To move. To speak. To be.
He fell backward, body limp, crashing against the altar stone with a gasp.
The veiled man knelt beside him.
"You carry ghosts," he whispered. "So do I. But mine do not scream. They weep."
Kael's fingers twitched.
A flame burst from his chest—wild, panicked, reflexive.
The veiled man recoiled, singed at the edge of his robe.
"Ah," he said. "Still tethered. Still fighting."
He stood and turned to go.
"But not for long."
Kael lay gasping in the snow, the spiral glyph beneath him glowing faintly.
Then it dimmed.
And the clearing was empty again.
Except for the crows.
They circled tighter now.
Watching.
Waiting.