Chapter 12: The Man Who Wasn't
Kael stumbled back, his breath ragged, eyes wild with something between fear and disbelief.
Lyra barely registered the dim candlelight, the thick silence pressing in around them. Her mind reeled.
Kael is Oran.
Oran is Kael.
But how?
"You knew," she said, her voice quiet but unshaking. "You knew things you shouldn't have. You warned me like you had already lived this."
Kael pressed a hand to his temple as if something inside his skull was splitting open. "He shook his head violently. "No. I don't remember. I don't"
Lyra took a step forward. "What's the last thing you do remember?"
Kael's chest rose and fell rapidly. His fingers curled into his palms. "The woods," he said hoarsely. "I remember waking up in the woods outside Whisperwood. I didn't know who I was. Just that I needed to stay away from this town."
His gaze snapped to hers. "But I came back anyway."
A chill settled deep in Lyra's bones. Because the curse called you back.
Because it never let you go.
The Hollow Saint's voice echoed in her mind: Every curse must have a vessel.
Kael's face twisted in frustration, in something dangerously close to grief. "If I was Oran, why didn't I remember? Why did it take this long?"
Lyra's throat was dry. "Because you weren't supposed to."
The Saint hadn't simply erased Oran. It had buried him.
His past. His identity. His self.
And yet, something had gone wrong. Kael had returned, had acted against his own instincts, had helped her.
The curse was unraveling.
Which meant something even worse was coming.
They left the chapel in silence, the night thick and suffocating.
Back at the inn, Kael paced the room, his movements sharp and restless. "If I was Oran, then that means I failed," he muttered. "I didn't stop this. I didn't save anyone."
Lyra sat on the edge of the bed, staring at him. "Maybe you weren't meant to."
Kael stopped pacing. "What do you mean?"
She exhaled slowly. "The Hollow Saint said you refused to take its place. What if that was never a choice?"
Kael's jaw clenched. "If I refused, they would've found someone else."
Lyra nodded. "And yet, the curse didn't stop. That means it still has a vessel."
The realization hit them both at once.
The curse didn't just take Kael's past.
It took something else.
Kael's voice was hollow. "Then who did it take?"
A terrible thought formed in Lyra's mind.
Oran had refused.
Kael had been made to forget.
But someone had still taken the Hollow Saint's place.
Lyra's blood ran cold.
"…What if it wasn't just you?" she whispered.
Kael's expression darkened. "What are you saying?"
Lyra forced herself to say it. "What if someone else was sacrificed instead?"
Silence stretched between them.
Kael's fists tightened. "Then we find out who."
Because if someone had taken the Saint's place, then the curse wasn't finished.
It was still waiting.
And Lyra had a sickening feeling it was waiting for her.