The wind always spoke in the Valley of Nareen, but no one listened anymore.
Aela did.
She sat alone beneath the skeletal frame of a crumbling windmill, fingers brushing the dirt where wildflowers once bloomed. Now only brittle stems remained, snapping under her touch like fragile bones. The sky above was a pale, dusty gray, the kind that made the sun look shy—barely peeking, barely warming.
In the valley below, the village of Elowen murmured with its usual routines. Faint hammering. Distant sheep bells. The occasional shout. Life pretending to be normal in a place where the past was forbidden to speak.
Aela tilted her head. There it was again—the whisper.
Not wind. Not breath. A voice. Low, fragmented, like it was being dragged across centuries to reach her.
"Aela..."
She froze.
She had heard her name on the wind before. Once, twice. Dreams, they said. Echoes of grief, said others. But this was different. Closer. Sharper.
She stood and scanned the horizon. Nothing but grass and stone. The field was empty—always empty—except for the broken windmill behind her and the ring of ancient stones nearby. Everyone avoided the stones. They said memory lingered there too long, twisting itself into shadows.
Aela walked toward them anyway.
The circle of standing stones had no carvings, no runes. Nothing to explain why they pulsed faintly with heat whenever she neared them. She stretched out a hand, hesitated, then touched one.
A flicker.
A face.
Gone.
She staggered back. Her breath came fast now. Not fear—something else. A jolt through her spine. Like the feeling you get when you know someone just walked over your grave, even though you're still alive.
Then, without warning, the wind stopped.
Dead still.
In the silence, something stirred behind her.
She turned slowly.
At the foot of the windmill stood a boy.
He looked about her age, maybe older, with windswept hair and a traveler's cloak stitched with strange silver thread. His eyes—one green, one gray—glinted with recognition, though she was sure she had never seen him before.
"You touched the stone," he said, not unkindly.
She swallowed. "You saw that?"
"I felt it." He walked toward her, his boots crunching on the dry earth. "The echoes called louder than usual. I came to listen."
"You talk like you're not from here."
"I'm not," he said. "Not anymore."
Aela's instincts flared. People didn't come to Elowen. Especially not from elsewhere. The valley had been closed off since the Unraveling—since the war that erased history.
"Who are you?"
He offered a faint smile. "Call me Kael. And you must be Aela. The last listener."
She stiffened. "How do you know my name?"
"I heard it," he said. "Same as you just did."
Her heart hammered in her chest. She was about to demand more when something rippled through the air between them—a pressure, like a bubble stretching too far.
Kael's eyes narrowed. "It's starting again."
"What is?"
He stepped closer. "The past. It's waking up."
A sharp wind slashed through the valley, and suddenly the sky darkened—clouds rolling in where there had been none. From the standing stones came a humming, deep and ancient, vibrating through the soles of their feet.
Kael turned to her urgently. "We have to go."
"Go where?"
"Anywhere but here. If you stay, you'll be caught in it."
"In what?"
But she already knew.
Aela's vision blurred. Her surroundings flickered—stone, windmill, field—all fading like old paint in rain. In their place came flashes of other memories. Men in armor. Cities made of light. Towers falling into the sea. Her own reflection in a mirror that didn't exist.
Then—
Darkness.
And silence.
When she came to, she was somewhere else.
The windmill was gone. So was the valley. She stood in a vast chamber of polished black stone, its domed ceiling lit by ghostly blue lanterns that floated like stars. Around her, murals danced across the walls—living images of battles, broken timelines, forgotten kings.
Kael stood beside her, steadying her with one hand.
"What... what is this place?"
"A memory vault," he said. "Hidden beneath the real. Only those who hear the echoes can find it."
Aela turned in slow awe. The images—moving as if alive—drew her in. One showed a girl with silver eyes standing atop a cliff, holding a blade of light. Another, a gate of fire splitting a forest in two.
She felt them—not just saw them.
"They're... real?"
"They were," Kael said. "Once. This place holds what the world chose to forget."
Aela frowned. "Why would anyone forget all this?"
Kael's eyes darkened. "Because remembering has a price."
She looked back at him. "Then why can I hear them?"
"Because the world needs someone who can."
He stepped forward and held out something wrapped in cloth. She took it slowly, unwrapping it to reveal a small pendant shaped like a circle split in two—one half silver, one half black.
As she touched it, the air sang.
Her mind filled with a single thought:
"Find the Dawn."