There were no stars above the Ash Canopy.
Only a black sky wrapped in silence, where the wind had long forgotten how to whisper. Kaelen walked beneath branches that didn't sway and leaves that didn't fall, the forest petrified by the Rift's breath. Each tree looked burned, but when touched, felt like polished bone—thick with stagnant power.
Aelira walked beside him. Even she was quieter than usual, her blade sheathed, her fingers twitching toward her hilt only when the silence pressed in too deep.
"This place is wrong," she muttered.
Kaelen didn't disagree.
"The tomb is close," he said.
The directions hadn't come from maps or rumors.
They came from the Weave.
From the memory that had stitched itself into his bones back in the crawling ruin.
A tomb that wasn't buried in earth—but in absence.
Absence of light. Absence of time.
They walked for hours.
No path. No sound. No scent.
Just roots like cracked tendons, and trees leaning inward like watchers.
Then—
Kaelen stopped.
Before them stood an arch of stone, covered in symbols no language could claim.
Just echoes. Carved in reverse. Bending inward.
"This is it," he said.
Aelira's brow furrowed. "I don't see anything."
"You're not supposed to."
He reached out and touched the air between the stones.
It folded.
Reality didn't break. It yielded.
A slow ripple, like water catching fire, and then the arch melted open.
Behind it: a stair of pure black, descending into nothing.
Kaelen stepped forward.
Aelira grabbed his wrist. "You don't know what's in there."
He met her eyes.
"I know what's missing from out here."
She held his gaze for a moment.
Then followed.
The descent into the tomb was like falling into a memory that refused to be remembered.
Every step seemed to last longer than the one before. Every breath thinner. The deeper they went, the more the Weave began to blur—threads drifting sideways, warping into knots Kaelen had never seen before.
It wasn't space that warped here.
It was meaning.
They entered a wide chamber with no walls, only darkness. But not empty.
Impressions.
Shapes that flickered when Kaelen didn't look directly. A feeling of being surrounded—not by bodies, but versions of events that had never occurred.
Aelira drew her blade.
Kaelen held out a hand. "No use."
The tomb wasn't guarded by monsters.
It was the monster.
He knelt and pressed his hand to the floor.
It wasn't stone.
It was thought. Condensed memory hardened by time.
He whispered.
The Weave answered.
A spiral unfurled before him—a corridor of reflections that showed not what was, but what might have been.
One showed Kaelen smiling in a cottage with a woman he didn't recognize.
Another showed him bleeding out, nameless, forgotten in a ruined battlefield.
Another… didn't show him at all.
Aelira flinched. "This place—"
"It's not just a tomb," Kaelen said. "It's a vault."
"For what?"
He stood.
"For possibilities."
They walked deeper.
The tomb adjusted around them. No doors. No stairs. Just paths of choice, opening and closing as Kaelen made decisions. Aelira noticed it first.
"You're not guessing," she said.
Kaelen nodded. "This place responds to thought."
He stopped.
Then turned his head.
A shadow peeled itself from the corner of the chamber—formless at first, then shaped into a silhouette.
It was Kaelen.
But younger. Eyes brighter. Face softer.
And afraid.
"You shouldn't be here," the doppelgänger whispered.
Kaelen narrowed his gaze. "You're not real."
"I'm the Kaelen who ran."
Aelira stiffened. "Illusion?"
Kaelen shook his head. "No. Just a road not taken."
The doppelgänger stared at him. "You'll become it. You already know what I mean."
"I've seen it."
"You shouldn't want it."
"I don't."
"Then why do you walk this path?"
Kaelen hesitated.
The other Kaelen smiled. "Because you have to. Just like I had to run."
Then he faded.
No violence. No flash.
Just a choice quietly removed.
The next chamber opened like a breath.
Circular. Tall. And at its center—an obelisk.
Not of stone.
Of unwritten Weave.
Kaelen stepped toward it.
But a voice called out.
"Stop."
Another shadow formed.
Aelira raised her blade again—but this time, Kaelen lifted a hand gently.
This one was familiar.
She had skin of pale copper, long braided hair, and eyes like molten dusk.
A figure from memory. From half-glimpsed ruin.
She was younger than Kaelen, but her presence warped the air like starlight pulled too tight.
Aelira scowled. "Who the hell—"
But Kaelen whispered.
"Velis."
She was not supposed to appear here.
Not until later.
Not until Kaelen dreamed of a different reality.
But the tomb didn't obey rules.
It showed truths early when the mind wandered.
Velis smiled. "You haven't dreamed of me yet."
"No."
"But you will."
Aelira frowned, stepping closer. "Who is she?"
Velis stepped past Kaelen, eyes only on him.
"I'm the one who waited when he didn't exist."
Kaelen exhaled. "You're not real. Not yet."
"But I will be. The tomb leaks, Kaelen. Threads are loosening. Even time is whispering backward."
Kaelen moved to the obelisk.
Velis didn't stop him.
Neither did Aelira.
He placed his palm on the smooth, pulsing surface.
Pain shot through his chest—like a wire dragging through his spine.
Then silence.
Then:
A scream.
The chamber shuddered.
Not sound.
History.
Thousands of voices. Choices. Selves. All screaming at once.
Kaelen's body arched.
Then froze.
When his eyes opened again, he stood in his own mind.
But not alone.
All around him: Kaelens.
Some wore crowns. Others bled. One laughed with madness, his body half-machine.
Another wept.
All looked to him.
The true one.
The chosen one.
The Weave wrapped around him like a cloak.
Then—
They bowed.
And vanished.
Kaelen gasped and stumbled back.
The obelisk had shattered.
Not violently.
Peacefully.
It had given him something.
A seed.
Of what?
He didn't know.
Yet.
Aelira caught him.
"You alright?"
He nodded. Slowly.
Velis was gone.
So was her voice.
Just a whisper remained:
"Not yet... but soon."
They left the tomb without light.
When they returned to the surface, the sky had shifted.
The stars above the Ash Canopy were visible again.
But they were wrong.
New constellations.
Old names.
Threads rewriting themselves.
Kaelen looked up.
And smiled.