The sky turned violet by morning.
Not dawn. Not dusk. Something else.
As they moved northeast toward the edge of the Wraithlands, the air grew colder, and the trees began to lean unnaturally, like they had heard things they shouldn't have.
Frido didn't speak.
Not after what the Archive had shown.
The voice from the stone still echoed:
> "The voice you carry is not your own."
He couldn't forget it.
He didn't want to.
But part of him feared what it truly meant.
---
The Crumbling Tower
It came into view just after midday.
Rising from the cliffs like a finger pointing into stormclouds, the Tower of Lethen had once been a beacon of knowledge. Now it was broken near the top, its spire collapsed in a spiral of shattered stone. Vines crept up its sides, but nothing bloomed.
Teren stared. "I thought this place was just a story."
"It is," Mirea replied, "and it isn't."
They entered through a door left ajar—not rusted, but opened… as if someone had been waiting.
Inside, the air shimmered.
Not heat.
Time.
---
The One Who Knows Frido
The figure sat beside a rusted telescope in the observatory.
An old man. Thin. Cloaked in layers of cloth and silence. His eyes were blind, but he looked at Frido the moment they stepped inside.
"I've been waiting," he said.
Frido hesitated. "You know me?"
"I remember you," the man said, smiling faintly. "Even though this is the first time we've met."
Teren took a step forward, hand on his sword. "Explain."
The old man raised one hand.
And in the space above it, a dozen tiny stones floated.
Each engraved with a different version of Frido's name.
"Some of you die in battle," the man said softly. "Some vanish. One became a tyrant. One… stopped the war. All began the same. All ended differently."
Frido swallowed. "Why me?"
"Because you were born with silence in your soul. The kind that listens. The kind the world fears."
---
A Tower That Collects Futures
The man led them to a narrow staircase that spiraled down.
Each floor was a memory.
A child crying out as soldiers marched past.
A girl hiding a letter she never sent.
A blade dropped before it could kill.
A king choosing exile over revenge.
Mirea saw herself on the fifth floor.
Younger. Standing in front of a grave. Not crying—just holding a flute.
She turned away.
Frido stopped on the eighth.
It was him… years older.
Kneeling on a ruined field, placing stones on the graves of enemies.
All while whispering their names.
---
Time Is Breaking
When they reached the base, the air buzzed.
Cracks shimmered in the stone—not physical, but temporal.
Through one, Frido saw a vision of himself leading soldiers.
Through another, of dying alone beneath a collapsed shrine.
And in one…
Mirea.
Older.
Alone.
Telling a child the story of a man who gave up everything to stop a war no one remembers.
Frido stumbled back.
"I don't want this."
The old man placed a hand on his shoulder. "Want has nothing to do with it."
---
The Truth Written on the Sky
They stepped outside as thunder rolled overhead.
Above the tower, clouds parted—not from weather, but purpose.
And in the gap, written in twisting streams of starlight, were words only Frido could read:
> "The world does not remember peace. But it remembers sacrifice."
He knelt.
Not because he was weak.
But because the weight of what was coming finally landed.
Mirea stood beside him.
She didn't ask what he saw.
She didn't have to.
Because she had seen enough.
And in that silence between them, the old man's voice carried one last time:
> "You are not meant to survive, Frido.
But you are meant to be remembered."
---
A Choice Made Quietly
That night, around the fire at the tower's base, no one spoke.
Until Mirea said:
"I think I understand now."
Frido looked up.
"What?"
She held her flute. "Why I never told you. Why you never saw it."
He didn't respond.
She smiled sadly. "Because love is loud. And you're walking a path only silence can endure."
She didn't expect him to reply.
But he did.
"I see you now."
Mirea froze.
Frido looked away. "It's too late. But I do."
And in that moment—painful, quiet, and true—they sat beside one another.
Together, in a world already writing their ending.
---
End of Chapter 36