Chapter 15 – The Path Once Broken
The silence was different now.
Not the quiet of solitude, nor the hush of danger. This was the kind of silence that waited—like the air before a storm, or a prayer hanging unanswered in a forgotten temple.
Erynn stood at the edge of the ruin, the mask cradled in one hand, the Unmarked Blade sheathed across his back. Behind him, Maerin and Kaleid said nothing. There was nothing left to say.
They all felt it.
Something had shifted.
---
They left the ruin the next morning, traveling through mist-choked woods where the sun never broke the canopy. No birds sang. No beasts stirred. Even the wind seemed to avoid the path.
"We're being guided," Kaleid said, running a hand over a smooth barkless tree. "Runes of old growth—hidden beneath bark."
"Guided or herded?" Maerin muttered, hand on dagger.
Erynn didn't respond. He could feel the rune humming under his skin, like a compass turned toward something it remembered.
---
By midday, they reached a glade.
Stone pillars rose like teeth from the earth, each carved with runes so ancient even Kaleid hesitated to read them.
In the center stood a massive altar.
Not for sacrifice.
For remembrance.
Erynn approached it slowly. The mask pulsed in his hand.
The moment he stepped onto the stone dais, a tremor ran through the ground.
The altar flared with light—and the runes around it stirred, forming a circle.
Then a voice spoke.
> "Designation: Runebearer of the Hollow. Access granted."
The others froze.
The voice was mechanical, emotionless—and impossibly ancient.
> "Vault memory unlocked. Sequence: Fall of the Accord's First Iteration. Year Zero. Source: Eidon Archive."
A ripple passed through the circle of runes, and suddenly they were no longer standing in a glade.
They were elsewhere.
---
It wasn't a vision.
It was a recording.
A memory made real.
Around them stretched a city of impossible scale—towers woven from light and stone, airships floating between them, rivers that shone with glyphlight. The air shimmered with runes that moved on their own.
At the heart stood a throne. Vast. Empty.
A crowd had gathered around it. Thousands—no, tens of thousands—clad in robes of varying hue and rank. Their skin bore etched runes. Some on arms. Some on brows. Others along the spine.
All bowed.
Except one.
A lone man. Cloaked in gray. Unarmed. Barefoot.
No rune on his body.
Only a blade at his side.
The Unmarked Blade.
---
The voice continued.
> "Record fragment: Trial of the Unbound."
A robed judge stepped forward.
> "You have violated the Accord. You have refused the Bonding. You have walked the path alone."
The man said nothing.
Another figure—masked, tall, female—stepped forward.
> "Name yourself, and be spared the Rite of Severance."
Still, silence.
Then the man spoke.
> "I have no name."
> "Names are given by power. You hold no power, only defiance," the masked figure said.
> "You are wrong," he replied. "I hold what you lost—freedom."
The crowd gasped.
The judges raised their hands.
> "Then let the Unmarked be buried."
"Let him be forgotten."
"Let the path never be walked again."
---
The memory shattered.
Erynn fell to his knees.
Maerin grabbed his shoulder, voice sharp. "You with me?"
He nodded, breath ragged. Kaleid's hands were glowing—ready to cast wards, eyes wide.
"What was that?" Kaleid whispered. "Was that… the first Accord?"
Erynn rose slowly, hand still clutching the mask. It now felt warm—like it had absorbed the echo.
"Not the first," he murmured. "The one before that."
"A version of the Accord that was erased," Kaleid added. "Wiped from history."
"They didn't just bury the man," Maerin said. "They buried the world he remembered."
---
That night, they camped by a stream winding through root-choked stone. Erynn sat apart again, mask before him, blade beside him.
"I'm not just fighting the Order," he whispered.
"I'm fighting what came before."
The rune inside him pulsed once—softly. Like an answer.
---
Elsewhere, under a moonless sky, the Silenceborn were loosed.
Ten figures. No names. No runes. No emotion.
Each had once been a Runeknight.
Each had been stripped of their glyphs, their minds unbound, and reshaped into hunters.
They moved like phantoms across the land.
Their target was not just Erynn.
It was the memory he now carried.
---
In the Tower of Silence, Serenya stood alone in the flame chamber. She held a map inked in living glyph—a relic from the Old Script wars.
A new node had lit.
Near the ruins of Voren'thal.
She frowned.
"The mask is found," she said.
A voice replied from the shadows.
"Then he walks the same path as the Unnamed."
Serenya nodded.
"Then let him face the same fate."
---
To be continued…