The wind carried whispers that morning—low and strange, like forgotten prayers stirred from dust. Caedren stood atop the north watchtower, eyes fixed on the path where the horizon broke into jagged black lines. The old road from the coast. The road none dared travel.
"They say ghosts walk there," Ebran said quietly behind him. "Soldiers who never stopped marching. Whole battalions cursed for deserting the crown."
"Ghosts don't wear boots," Caedren replied, eyes narrowing. "But men do."
By midmorning, the dust had thickened. A small column moved down the broken highway—no banners, no horns. Just silence and the clink of iron.
At the front rode a man on a pale horse. He wore no helm, but his face was hidden beneath a carved mask of bone. Around him marched a dozen others—some in scavenged armor, some in robes faded to ash.
The gates of Highrest groaned open. Caedren waited at the threshold, flanked by Neris and Voren. Behind them, the people of Highrest lined the walls, blades in hand, breath held.
The masked rider stopped twenty paces from the gate.
"You are the fire," he said, voice like gravel rubbed against stone. "We were told it still burned."
"It does," Caedren said. "And it warms the weary—but scorches the wicked."
The masked man dismounted, slowly, as if carrying a weight not seen. He removed the mask.
His face was pale, lined, and strangely peaceful. His eyes glowed faintly with silver, like moonlight drowned in deep water.
"I am Sorren of the Hollow Choir," he said. "And I come with offerings."
He lifted his cloak. In his satchel, bound in cloth, were pages—hundreds of them. Songs. Letters. Edicts. Maps.
Words from the world that had tried to forget itself.
"We have walked the old cities," Sorren said. "Gathered the fragments. The stories. The truth."
Voren stepped forward, disbelief on his face. "That language… the ink. These are from the Library of Arendel. Burned a century ago."
"Not burned," Sorren said. "Stolen. Hidden. Guarded by those who still believe history is worth bleeding for."
Caedren took the satchel gently.
"And why bring it to me?"
"Because," Sorren said, looking up at the walls of Highrest, "no king would accept such truth. But a kingless world might."
That night, a council was held again.
The scrolls Sorren brought told of cities still untouched by the fall. Of groups calling themselves "the Remnant Crowns." Of a whispered name rising in the west—The Chainfather—who forged alliances not with oaths, but with blackmail and fear.
"He is not a king," Sorren said. "But a collector of broken ones. He bends those who fled into his shape."
Caedren nodded. "And soon, he'll see Highrest not as a threat—but as a rival."
"Then what do we do?" Neris asked.
Caedren looked around at them all. The forge-warmed faces. The old scars. The children who still slept with one eye open.
"We do not become a new kingdom," he said. "We become the memory of what the old ones should have been. And when he comes…"
His eyes flared like flint.
"…we teach the Chainfather what it means to face a people who bow to no throne."
Outside, as the last councilor left the chamber, Sorren remained.
He turned to Caedren. "You carry it, don't you? The weight."
"Always."
"Then you should know something," Sorren said, voice quieter now. "Kael's sword was not lost in battle. It was broken—by his own hand."
Caedren stared.
"Why?"
"So no one could raise it after him."