Time drifted by. Not ticking off on calendars or anything so obvious—more like the air after a thunderstorm, where you can finally breathe again.
Silverwood, that old haunted place, kinda got its groove back. These days, people wandered around with telescopes and weird instruments, not torches and pitchforks. Kids were learning about the stars, not from some crusty old book, but from songs that twisted around the twilight breeze—catchy, if you listened close enough.
Elara's story? She was "the Voice-Born" now. Her name was literally etched in silver along the Arch on Skyehill. Every solstice, folks showed up, belting out the "Song of the Whisper." No one actually wrote it down, but, somehow, everybody knew it. Like it was stuck in their DNA or something.
But, yeah, not everything was all rainbows. Way out past the city, in the Forgotten Vale—where even the stars seemed too creeped out to show up—something started to move.
Maelin was there. Just a kid, no shoes, standing on this squishy moss, gripping a beat-up scrap of parchment she fished out from under a busted tree. Seven stars, swirling. In the middle—a flame. Same old map? Nope.
The lines didn't sit still. They shimmered and twitched beneath her fingertips, shuffling around like they had somewhere better to be. Not the map Elara found, but, I dunno, more like a door. A doorway drawn in freaking starlight.
Maelin glanced up. Her jaw dropped.
Sky went all weird—warping, bending, shiny like someone melted glass up there. She felt this hum rattling in her chest. Not scary, just...familiar. Like it was calling her name.
And then—boom. A whisper, soft as breath.
"You hear me, don't you?"
A voice. Old as dirt, warm as soup. Elara.
Maelin just stared, eyes bugging out. "You're real?"
Wind picked up, swirling, making music out of nothing.
"The Whisper endures. And the world's starting to remember. But darkness—well, it always comes back for another round."
Stars flickered, like they were nodding.
"This time, I'm not fighting alone."
And right then, Maelin felt it—deep down, past her bones. She was being called. Not by some dusty prophecy. Nah.
By a memory. Something passed down, handed over by the stars themselves.
The Whisper had picked again.
And the story? Oh, it was far from done.
Not by a long shot.