Chapter 122: The Ashen Vale
They buried the dead in silence.
Not because of grief alone—but because sound still trembled in Veradin's bones, echoing the memory of the First Gate's scream. Every word now felt sacred, or dangerous. Even the wind moved like a mourner.
Caedren stood atop a broken wall, gazing toward the horizon.
Ash clouds painted the dawn in hues of bruised violet and ember gold. The spire was gone—nothing left but a scorched crater where the cathedral had stood. But in its place, strange moss had begun to grow: silver-grey tendrils that shimmered faintly under sunlight, like something trying to remember what it once was.
Lysa approached, bruised and wrapped in a tattered cloak. Her eyes were sunken but alert.
"The survivors say the Voice wasn't the only Herald," she said.
Caedren didn't turn. "I know."
"They call the next one the Dream-Eater. It's said to dwell in the Ashen Vale. That valley in the old maps—the one they said was cursed after the fall of the First Dynasty."
Caedren finally looked at her.
"That's where we go next."
The Ashen Vale had once been a kingdom unto itself—before the sundering, before Kael, before even the old kings of stone. Its name was older than maps. Some said it had been the garden of the gods. Others called it a battlefield so ancient that time itself gave up counting. There were ruins too broken to date and statues too worn to name.
Now, nothing grew there.
The land was dry and brittle, as if fire had passed through not once but forever. Trees stood leafless and white, like the bones of a forgotten forest. Rivers were empty, their beds choked with bone dust. The wind that moved through the canyons carried no scent, no sound, only the sense of something waiting. And in the distance rose the remains of the Obsidian Ziggurat, its black geometry perfect and cold, untouched by centuries.
At night, the stars refused to shine directly over the Vale. Clouds avoided it. Even lightning curved around its border.
Something watched.
The journey took nine days.
They traveled light. Caedren, Lysa, a pair of scouts from the eastern watch, and a lone guide named Etrin, who claimed to have once hunted spirits in the Vale before his voice was taken. He spoke now only in charcoal sketches and broken gestures.
On the third, they passed a caravan of chained pilgrims—men and women with hollowed eyes, their tongues cut and heads branded. The cult had sent them away, not toward a shrine but from it.
As if even they could not withstand what now lingered in the Vale's heart.
Caedren offered mercy. Lysa argued against it.
"They might be spies."
"They're broken."
"So was the Voice, once."
He gave them water, not freedom. Trust, but not blind.
They kept walking.
On the fifth day, they saw the first signs of the Vale's edge: stone monuments cracked like split teeth, messages in forgotten tongues carved in spirals that led to nowhere. The further they walked, the more the world unraveled. Sound came late. Shadows moved without light. The air grew thinner but not colder.
On the seventh night, Caedren dreamed.
He stood in a field of golden flowers. A tower rose in the distance. Ivan stood beneath it—taller than he should be, younger than he ever was. His eyes were filled with sorrow.
"You carry a burden that was never yours," Ivan said. "But it fits your shoulders."
"I need answers," Caedren whispered. "Why does the Gate know me?"
"Because part of you was meant for it," Ivan said. "The blood you carry… the memories it holds…"
He looked up. The sky above the tower was bleeding stars.
"…it remembers what I tried to forget."
Caedren woke with a gasp. His sword hummed faintly in its scabbard.
The Ashen Vale greeted them on the tenth day with silence. Not just a lack of sound—but a denial of it. Their footfalls made no noise. Birds that flew overhead became invisible. Even their thoughts felt… thinner.
Lysa tried to write in her journal. The ink evaporated.
Whatever the Dream-Eater was, it had already begun its feast.
They approached the Ziggurat at dusk.
It pulsed—not visibly, but in the gut. A rhythm, a pull. As if something beneath it breathed. Or worse—dreamed. The stone was unmarked, except for a single symbol etched into the summit: a spiral devouring itself.
They climbed.
Inside, there were no stairs. Only descents. Spiraling, endless. Ceilings warped. Corners led nowhere. Time bent. Hours passed between blinks. Lysa began humming a tune she couldn't remember learning. Caedren counted steps, but lost track around three thousand.
And at the bottom, they found the mirror.
Not glass.
Not silver.
But memory.
And it showed them… each other.
Caedren saw himself through Lysa's eyes: ruthless, cold, burdened. Lysa saw herself through his: clever, fragile, fierce. A sword in a storm. A wound wrapped in iron.
They stood in silence, watching each other's reflections breathe. Neither dared blink first.
Then a voice.
"You come to kill what you do not understand."
The Dream-Eater appeared—not as a monster, but as a man. Or what had once been one.
He wore robes of living smoke. His face flickered like candlelight. His eyes were empty, not blind, not closed—just… absent.
"You are not real," Caedren said.
"I am the cost," said the Dream-Eater. "Of all that was buried."
He raised a hand.
Lysa fell to the ground, choking.
Memories spilled from her mouth—her childhood, her laughter, the scent of her mother's hair. Her first kiss. The color of her father's coat. It poured out of her like water, like ash. She screamed without sound.
Caedren lunged, sword flashing, but the blade passed through smoke.
"You cannot kill dream," said the Herald.
Caedren stepped back.
"No," he said. "But I can wake up."
And he slammed his blade into the floor.
The ziggurat screamed. Not in sound—but in undoing. Its structure began to reverse, time folding in on itself. Walls split and fused. The mirror cracked.
Caedren seized Lysa, shouted her name—but she didn't respond.
So he spoke her name not aloud—but through memory.
Through the same mirror.
And it shattered.
They woke atop the ziggurat. Dawn. Real. Cold.
The Vale was still dead—but the silence was gone. Birds cawed in the distance. Wind whispered over stone.
And in the far north, across seas unseen, a new gate stirred.
The Third Gate—the Gate of Blood.
Caedren stood, breathless.
"We're running out of time."
Lysa nodded.
"But we're still ahead of it."