"To name a thing is to bind it. But what do we call the thing that names us?"
—Inscription on a ruined pillar in Kael'Sareth
Morning never came in Kael'Sareth.
Only a dim glow filtered through the haze, as though the sun had been swallowed by the Wound and spat back as a faint memory of light. The silence that followed the figure's appearance still lingered in the air—thicker than fog, heavier than time.
Amine sat beside the spire, his back against the smooth black stone, watching the glyph hover in the air like a wound in reality.
Mira was still asleep, though restlessly. Thanor paced in a wide circle around their makeshift camp, growling low at the air, sensing something Amine couldn't see.
The glyph pulsed.
A circle within a circle.
A gate.
He remembered the voice.
"I am the memory of silence."
What did it mean?
Was the figure a ghost? A construct? A god?
Or—most terrifying of all—was it him, from a future he hadn't yet lived?
Amine pressed his palm to the glyph.
No visions came this time.
Only a name whispered in his own voice: Aeraeth.
Not a word from any language he knew. It resonated deep in his chest, as though it had always been there, waiting to be spoken.
He whispered it again.
Aeraeth.
And the glyph vanished.
When Mira awoke, she found him staring at the sky.
"Did it speak to you again?" she asked.
He shook his head. "No. But it left something behind."
He told her the name. Watched her reaction.
She stiffened.
"I've heard that word before."
"Where?"
"In dreams. When I was young. Before my magic awakened. I used to see a city in the clouds. A gate of light. And always, I'd hear a voice saying Aeraeth waits. I thought it was just a nightmare."
"Maybe it was a memory," Amine said. "Maybe all of this was."
They left Kael'Sareth that day, heading north toward the edge of the Known Lands.
There were no roads here. No maps. Only stories half-remembered and paths walked by pilgrims of madness.
They walked in silence.
Not out of fear, but reverence.
The world itself felt like it was holding its breath.
Amine thought of what the figure had said.
"You are the echo. We are the cause."
Was it accusing him?
Or warning him?
That night, as they rested beneath a broken stone archway, Mira finally asked the question both had been avoiding.
"What if we were never meant to win this war?"
Amine looked at the stars.
Or rather, where the stars should have been. Here, at the edge of the world, the sky was hollow. Not black, but blank. Like paper not yet written on.
"What if we're not here to win?" he said. "What if we're here to remember?"
"Then why give us power?" Mira's voice cracked. "Why make us mages at all, if we're just meant to be witnesses?"
"Because even memory needs a vessel," Amine said. "And magic is memory made flesh."
Mira didn't respond.
Instead, she took out a small stone from her satchel—smooth, etched with a single rune: the name of her brother, long dead.
"I keep it so I don't forget who I fight for," she said.
Amine looked at it.
Then reached into his own pack and pulled out something he hadn't looked at since his arrival in this world:
A folded photograph.
A school class.
Him, standing in the back row. Eyes dull. Mouth flat. Forgotten by the camera before the shutter even closed.
He handed it to Mira.
"That's who I was," he said.
She studied it. "You look…"
"Empty?"
"Alone."
He nodded. "I thought I didn't matter."
"You still think that?"
"No," he said, and looked at Thanor, who was now dozing beside the fire. "Now I think I'm part of something I don't understand. And that's terrifying. But it's better than feeling nothing."
In the morning, the world changed.
They woke to find everything had shifted.
The archway was gone. The ground different. Even the sky had changed color—greenish now, with veins of gold lightning crawling through distant clouds.
And on the horizon, a new structure had appeared.
A massive, floating platform of stone and crystal, hovering above the earth.
Unmarked.
Unmapped.
Unreal.
It did not belong.
Amine stared at it.
"It's a memory," he whispered. "Someone remembered this place into existence."
Mira's face had gone pale. "We're inside it now."
"Inside what?"
She looked at him, and for the first time in their journey, there was fear in her eyes.
"The Gate."