Echoes of the Forgotten Dawn

They left Virellan's Spine before the sun had fully risen. The ruin faded into the fog behind them like a half-remembered dream—only the pulsing weight of the third shard in Aela's pouch proved it had been real at all.

Neither she nor Kael spoke for a long while.

The silence between them wasn't tense… just fragile. Like glass.

Finally, Aela broke it.

"Was she real?"

Kael didn't look at her. "Yes. And no. If Sylen was pulled into the echo realms, then what you saw may have been a version of her—but not necessarily this world's version."

"But she knew me," Aela said softly. "She remembered me. And I remembered her."

Kael finally stopped walking. "Echoes don't forget, Aela. They wait. That's what makes them dangerous. They carry truth, yes—but also pain. Sometimes memory is a prison disguised as a window."

Aela dropped her gaze. "She warned me. Said the echoes are building something inside me."

"She's not wrong," Kael said after a pause. "Each shard you collect strengthens your connection. You're more than just a Seeker now. You're a vessel."

Aela looked up, her voice hardening. "For what?"

Kael hesitated.

That was all the answer she needed.

They resumed walking.

---

By afternoon, they reached a lowland basin where the mist thickened and the trees bent unnaturally inward. Kael called it The Vale of Folding, a place where timelines rubbed against each other like frayed rope.

"Reality's thinner here," he said. "Unstable. Watch the shadows. They might move before you do."

Aela didn't ask what that meant—she would find out soon enough.

Sure enough, the light changed as they moved deeper into the vale. Their footsteps echoed twice. Birds flew backward. The sun flickered in the sky like a faulty lantern.

It wasn't disorienting.

It was wrong.

Aela shivered. "How do we know we're still in our own timeline?"

Kael's mouth tightened. "We don't."

They stopped briefly at a collapsed watchtower near the center of the vale. There, Kael unrolled the map. New threads of ink had begun to appear—faint and flickering, like they weren't sure if they wanted to exist.

A fourth location glowed near the southern edge of the continent.

Iskari Reach.

Aela leaned over it. "Looks remote."

"Because it is," Kael said. "It's on the edge of a memory dead zone. Nothing echoes there. Nothing listens."

"Why would a shard be there?"

Kael met her gaze. "Because it's the safest place to hide something that remembers everything."

---

They camped just outside the Vale that night, far enough from the timeline warps that Aela could finally breathe without her thoughts doubling.

As she built the fire, Kael sat on the edge of the hill, staring into the distance. The sunset was purple and stretched oddly wide across the horizon, as if the world couldn't quite agree where the sky began.

Aela sat beside him. "You knew Sylen's name."

He didn't respond right away.

"She's not the first person I've met who came back changed," he said finally. "And she won't be the last."

Aela studied his profile. "You've been holding something back."

"I've been holding everything back," he said with a bitter smile. "Because if I told you the truth, you might not follow me to the end of this."

She didn't answer.

So he spoke.

"I wasn't just a Guardian of the Dawn," Kael said. "I helped design the failsafe that shattered it."

Aela's heart dropped. "You what?"

He turned toward her, eyes shining with the weight of old guilt. "I didn't know what it would do. We thought the Dawn was becoming unstable—that it would consume time if left unchecked. We created a failsafe, a way to collapse it cleanly. But someone… sabotaged it."

"Who?"

Kael's voice dropped to a whisper. "Riven."

The name hit the air like a stone in water.

Aela stood. "And you've been chasing the pieces of the thing you helped destroy?"

"I've been trying to undo what we broke," Kael said. "But that might not be possible. The shards aren't just fragments of the Dawn—they're fragments of us. Of the lives we lost. Of the futures we threw away."

Aela's mind reeled.

Everything made a little more sense now—Kael's hesitation, his knowledge, the pain in his eyes every time she held a shard.

"You should've told me," she said quietly.

"I was afraid it would change how you saw me," Kael said. "Because I've already changed how I see myself."

She stared at him for a long moment. Then said, "You're right. It does change how I see you."

Kael flinched.

"But not the way you think," she added.

She turned and walked back to the fire.

Kael stayed on the hill, alone.

---

That night, the stars didn't speak.

But the shards did.

Aela awoke just before dawn to a burning sensation in her chest.

The pendant glowed hot. The shards in her pouch buzzed with energy. A sound echoed in her ears—not words, but pulses. Like a beacon.

She sat up and whispered, "Someone's trying to find us."

Kael stirred. "From where?"

She reached for the map.

But the ink was already changing.

The path to Iskari Reach had vanished.

In its place, one word had appeared.

"Run."