She watched him sleep — or what passed for it now.
Kaelen lay beneath a cloak of ash-colored wool, breath shallow, eyes moving beneath shut lids as though chasing phantoms. The flickering fire beside them cast his face in broken half-light, shadows slipping over his cheekbones like the touch of some unseen specter.
Seralyn hated this place.
Not because of what they had seen — though that haunted her — but because of what it stirred.
She no longer trusted silence.
She rose, quietly, boots crunching soft gravel and bone-dust as she stepped away from the others. Rhess was kneeling in prayer again. Maeve sat apart, eyes half-closed, whispering to the stones. Seralyn wondered if either found peace in those rituals, or if they just pretended — the same way she did.
The wind here did not whistle or howl. It breathed. Low and constant, like something vast and sleeping just beneath the surface.
She walked toward the edge of the rise.
Below, far in the distance, the black spires of the Hollow Lands speared the sky, broken and veined with old fire. She could still see it — the throne, the skulls, the hunger carved into every jagged edge.
And the words.
"Two souls bearing light will stand before the Throne of Night."
Why her? Why Kaelen?
She was no chosen child of prophecy. She was a soldier's daughter with scars and a steady hand. And Kaelen — gods, he looked more like a revenant now than a man.
But the prophecy had spoken. And the whispers had recognized them.
Seralyn clenched her fists.
Somewhere deep inside, she felt the memory of a girl who once believed in heroes. That girl had died a long time ago.
But something remained.Not faith.Not hope.
Resolve.
She turned back to the fire. Kaelen stirred, murmuring in his sleep.
She knelt beside him and brushed a strand of dark hair from his brow.
"If they chose us," she whispered, "then they made a mistake. Because we are not saviors."
Her fingers curled into his.
"We are the fire they tried to bury."