The bones weren't buried.They were displayed.
Laid out like a warning across the rocks—skulls stacked on stakes, ribs twisted into spires, femurs threaded through braided ropes and hung from dead trees. Whatever had once lived in the ravine they entered… hadn't died naturally.
Mica walked ahead of Aero, her wind whispering around her fingers, held close and ready. The air was thick with silence—not the calm kind, but the kind that weighed heavy in the lungs.
Aero trailed behind, fingers brushing the dirt.
The Resonance here was wrong.
Twisted.
Corrupted.
Like the life that had once thrived in this place had been bled dry, then molded into a shape it was never meant to take.
"Are we sure we wanna go down there?" Mica asked.
"No," Aero said honestly.
She smirked. "Good. Means we should."
They climbed into the ravine cautiously. The sun overhead didn't reach the floor. Shadows clung to every wall like they were alive. At the base, they found it:
A doorway.
Stone. Massive. Covered in carvings that bled into one another like veins. It pulsed faintly green, matching the scar across Aero's chest.
The Resonance whispered behind the door.
Mica touched the stone. "This isn't a ruin."
"No," Aero said. "It's a tomb."
"Of what?"
He didn't answer.
Because the door opened on its own.
Inside was not a temple. Not a crypt.
It was a library.
Or what was left of one.
Scrolls rotted into mush. Stone tablets shattered. Shelves eaten by time. The only intact part was the center—a circle carved into the ground, filled with what looked like roots made of bone.
And in the middle—
A man.
Or what had once been one.
He was seated cross-legged, skin dried into parchment, robes of an ancient make, white hair grown into the floor. His chest was cracked open, but not from violence—from the inside. Something had grown through it.
Aero stepped forward.
The Resonance bowed.
The figure opened its eyes.
Mica cursed and reached for her magic, but Aero held a hand out.
"No," he said. "It's not alive."
"Could've fooled me."
The corpse-thing looked at Aero. And spoke.
"Ash-born. You wear the mark."
Its voice came from beneath the floor.
Aero swallowed. "Who are you?"
"I am what remains of Viren the Fifth. Speaker of Roots. Binder of the Living Pulse. Last Librarian of the Hollow Archive."
"You're… alive?"
"No. Not in the way you mean. I am memory. And you are trespassing."
Mica folded her arms. "You always this friendly to guests?"
"There are no guests. Only thieves or students."
Aero stepped into the circle.
"I want to learn."
The corpse smiled.
Its teeth had roots.
What followed wasn't conversation. It was injection.
Knowledge, force-fed into Aero's mind like fire through paper.
He saw things.
The truth of the world—buried, rewritten, burned.
He saw the old kingdoms—the Dying Realms—before the empires rose. Back when the Resonance was respected, not harvested. Before the elemental bloodlines consumed it all in flame, frost, and thunder.
He saw what the fire mages had done.
He saw his ancestors.
"You come from a line of tyrants," Viren whispered. "Flame-wielders who cut down forests to build their thrones. Who bled dry the Resonance to fuel their wars."
Aero saw images of them—men and women with blazing eyes, fire on their breath, laughter in their massacres.
"And when the land cried… your people burned its mouth shut."
Aero dropped to his knees.
Mica moved to steady him, but he held up a trembling hand.
"I have to see it."
"Why?" the dead librarian asked. "Do you crave punishment?"
"No," Aero whispered. "I need to know what not to become."
The lesson ended with blood.
Aero stood in the center of the circle, his nose bleeding, his body shaking.
But his eyes burned green.
"You carry the last hope of balance," Viren said. "You were born of fire. But you speak to the roots. If you learn to bind both…"
"I can fix it?"
"No. But you can change it."
Aero bowed.
"Thank you."
The corpse closed its eyes.
"Then go. West. To the Crater Spine. There is another who survived the Rot. She will teach you how to wield your true power."
Mica helped Aero out of the tomb.
As the door closed behind them, the bones outside the ravine whispered once more.
Not a threat.
Not a warning.
A prayer.
Later that night, by the fire, Aero sat still.
He hadn't spoken in hours.
Mica nudged him. "You're thinking too loud."
"I saw what my bloodline did."
"You saw what they were forced to do. Survival turns people into monsters."
"They weren't forced," he said. "They chose it. Again and again."
"You're not them."
"I have their fire."
"Yeah. And you're trying to grow a garden with it."
He looked at her.
"Do you think we can change the world?"
Mica shrugged. "Don't care about the world. I care about you."
Aero's throat tightened.
He looked at the stars.
The desert wind howled. But for the first time, it sounded less like a scream and more like a song.