The Hollow was behind him, but it had not let go.
Kael's boots crunched over brittle leaves as he emerged into pale morning light, his shoulders still marked by the weight of dreams. He hadn't spoken since the campfire. The boy's voice—you promised you'd stay—still clung to his breath like soot, unspoken.
He didn't know what the Hollow had shown him.
Only that it hadn't lied.
Before him stretched the foothills leading to the Ashen Downs, where char and snowfall mingled like memory and forgetting. A thin column of smoke curled faintly from the horizon—civilization, maybe. Or another ruin.
The System hadn't spoken since yesterday. It hadn't needed to.
Kael's mind was already full of echoes.
[System Notification]:"Proximity ping: Dormant Flame Signature—90% match.""Warning: Source emotionally unstable. Approach with caution."
Kael stilled.
Someone was close.
Not just physically. Emotionally—tethered.
He followed the signature across the ridge, the air thinning with altitude, his breath curling visible with every exhale. The path narrowed into a broken trail—old steps, half-swallowed by time.
At the peak, he found it:
A shrine. Half-collapsed. Weather-worn and silent.
Someone had built it from charwood and rusted iron, bound together by vine and hope. A firepit sat in its center, long-dead. Around it, fragments of offerings—bones, feathers, scorched cloth, a toy sword carved from ash-bark.
A grave for someone who hadn't died.
Or someone who still hadn't returned.
Kael stepped closer. The System buzzed with passive feedback, static riding the edge of his senses.
And then—
A voice. Not his.
Not the boy.
Not the Scorched King.
Feminine. Tired. Familiar.
"Still chasing ghosts, Kael?"
He turned sharply, breath caught.
No one there.
Only wind, and sky, and the slow hush of time forgetting itself.
But the voice had not been imagined. It had carried too much ache to be unreal.
He crouched beside the shrine and placed one hand on the cold edge of the firepit.
"Not chasing," he murmured. "Just… not ready to stop."
He left an ember from his pouch inside the pit and walked on.
Behind him, the flame flickered to life.
No wind. No spark. Just memory.
And something watching.
Waiting.