Morning never came fast enough in the wilds.
Kael didn't sleep that night, not really. He dozed in half-conscious loops, pulled between the chilly wind, the ache in his limbs, and the low, distant thrum of something else, The Shard. Even hidden beneath the stone, it whispered.
Not words, just a hum.
He sat with his back against the hollow rock, knees close to his chest, watching the grey light creep slowly into the forest. Snow had stopped falling sometime before dawn. The trees stood still like frosted statues.
Beside him, Veyra stirred.
She hadn't spoken much after their exchange and hadn't pressed about the shard or what it had done to him. She'd sat, tending to a shallow wound on her thigh and staring into the dark with the empty gaze of someone who had seen the vicissitude of life.
Now, as the pale sun began to climb the mountain ridge, she opened her eyes and said, "You dream?"
Kael blinked. "What?"
"Last night you were muttering."
"I don't remember."
She studied him for a moment. "You called out to someone, a name...Ash...something."
His gut tightened. "I didn't..."
"You did."
He sighed, pulling his cloak tighter. "It's the shard, it's... in me. Or on me, or something... every time I close my eyes, I see things... places I've never been... people I've never met."
"Prophetic visions?"
"No...memories...someone else's. It's like I've stolen a life that's trying to take mine back."
That made her pause.
Kael hesitated, then added, "When I touched it... I felt something... Power... But not the kind you want. It felt... ancient... cold... like the world went silent to listen."
Veyra said nothing for a long time.
Then, "What do you know of the Ashen Crown?"
He turned toward her. "You believe in that myth?"
"I believe in patterns, in buried truths." She leaned forward, speaking low. "My father used to say the stars remember what the land forgets. That, when a shard falls, the world stirs."
"Poetic."
"No," she said. "It is a warning."
They set off by midday.
Kael dug up the shard from beneath the stone, wrapping it in fresh cloth, this time layering it with pine sap to mask any magical residue. At least, that's what Veyra claimed. He wasn't sure if she was speaking from experience or desperation, but she moved like someone who'd lived a dozen lives and lost half of them.
The plan was simple: get off the slope before nightfall, reach the valley woods, and head east toward the old trade routes and from there, maybe find a shelter, or a guide or someone else who'd seen the starfall and wasn't trying to gut them in a ritual circle.
They walked mostly in silence.
Veyra led with slow, practised steps. She moved through the terrain with great expertise, scanning high ridges, checking for tracks, while keeping one hand on her spearshaft, high on alert. Even injured, she moved better than anyone Kael had travelled with before.
Kael followed, feeling like a shadow dragging behind her. His legs ached, and his breath came sharp and uneven. And every few minutes, the shard pulsed again.
It wasn't hurting him...not exactly... But he felt it, like a second heartbeat or a leash tightening.
By late afternoon, they reached a stretch of half-buried stone pillars, ruins maybe, or ancient markers, now worn down by centuries of snow and silence.
That's when Kael spoke.
"You said you commanded an army."
Veyra glanced back at him. "I said I used to. Don't glorify it."
"You were exiled?"
"Worse." She stepped over a snowdrift and paused beside one of the stones. "I was cleared, name wiped, rank revoked, and orders burned."
Kael frowned. "Why?"
She turned, her expression unreadable. "Because I refused to let the priests burn civilians for heresy. A child spoke the wrong name in prayer. I ordered my men to stand down"
"And they turned on you?"
She nodded. "Not all of them, but enough."
Kael stared at her.
It didn't make sense. People like that didn't end up following strangers through mountains. They retired rich or ended up dead.
"You could've gone home and started over."
"No," she said. "Home is where memory stabs the deepest."
He understood that too well.
As dusk fell, they found a half-collapsed stoneway lodge near the edge of a ridgeline. Moss-covered, open-roofed, with a partial hearth and walls mostly intact.
Good enough.
Kael gathered branches while Veyra inspected the lodge for signs of occupation. When she gave the all-clear, they built a small fire in the old hearth, keeping the flames low and smoke muted.
Warmth crept into Kael's fingers for the first time in days.
They ate what little they had, dried meat from Veyra's satchel and a frozen heel of bread Kael had swiped from a roadside shrine two nights earlier. It wasn't much, but it filled the silence.
When the fire was just embers, Kael leaned forward.
"Do you think there are more shards?"
Veyra didn't answer immediately.
"Yes," she said at last. "There always are."
"You've seen one before?"
"No, but legends have always circulated in military camps, forbidden ones. Men touched by stars who could hear the dead, Mages who aged backwards, and a woman who burned entire cities by accident."
Kael swallowed. "And what happened to them?"
"They were hunted...or worshipped...or both."
The fire popped.
Outside, the wind stirred the forest.
And then...
Shiing.
Not the fire.
The sound of a drawn blade.
Kael shot upright. Veyra was already on her feet, her half-broken spear ready.
From the darkness outside the lodge, came a low, measured voice.
"By the light of the Broken Sun... surrender the shard."
Kael's blood turned to ice.
Veyra stepped in front of him. "Don't move."
He didn't
More figures emerged, three, maybe four. All in dark robes, faces masked in wood and paint like broken saints. One held a lantern of violet fire.
"You've carried the shard too long, vessel. It roots deeper now."
Kael felt the shard pulse... hard and fast. His knees buckled. The fire died.
Then...
"ENOUGH."
The voice exploded inside his skull, not from the cultists... but from within. The very stone in his satchel flared.
The cultists froze.
And then they knelt.
All of them.
Veyra stared, stunned.
Kael clutched his side, gasping.
The voice faded.
And the silence returned, worse than before.