Ora hadn't meant to find this place. The trees had guided her here, their branches bending wrong, pointing deeper into grief.
Every step into the grove hurt differently. Not pain - recognition. The trees wept sap that looked like tears she'd cried. The flowers bloomed in the exact color of Lyra's last breath. The air tasted of every goodbye she'd never said.
"Child of Ash."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Ora spun, blades half-drawn, corruption flaring—
"Sister of Sorrow."
An ancient Sylvani emerged from what Ora had thought was just another tree. Bark-skin silver as moonlight, willow-hair moving without wind, eyes that held every color grief could be.
"I know your burden's weight." The woman moved closer, each step making the trees sigh. "You carry three million laments in your bones. Let me teach you to make them sing instead of scream."
"Who are you?"
"I am Claudia, Custode dei Lamenti. I keep the stories of the fallen. I lock power behind poetry. I transform endings into beginnings." She studied Ora with eyes that had seen everything. "And you, Ashkore, are the greatest lament I've never written."
"I don't need poetry. I need power."
"Child, they're the same thing." Claudia touched a tree, and it whispered a name - someone who'd died in Crysillia. "Every death is a poem. Every loss, a key. You spend your memories like coins when you could forge them into weapons."
"My memories are poison."
"Your memories are unrefined. Raw ore. Let me teach you to smelt them."
Claudia led her deeper into the grove. Here, the trees grew so close their branches formed a cathedral of sorrow. In the center, a pool of water so still it looked like polished obsidian.
"Look," Claudia said.
Ora looked. Saw herself reflected, but wrong. The reflection showed her memories as visible things - bright threads extending from her head, each one a moment she could sacrifice. But in Claudia's presence, they looked different. Not fuel to burn, but threads to weave.
"You see?" Claudia asked. "Memory isn't currency. It's material. Watch."
The ancient Sylvani dipped her hand in the pool. When she withdrew it, she held one of Ora's memory-threads. But instead of consuming it, she began to speak:
*"Sister-light, extinguished brightYour laughter now my battle cryIn corruption's darkest nightYour memory will never die"*
The thread didn't disappear. It transformed, becoming a shield of light around Ora. The memory of Lyra's laughter was still there, but now it protected instead of haunted.
"How?"
"Three thousand years of practice. Every Conceptual Lock you've encountered? I created them. Every riddle that guards power? Written with tears for someone who died for or because of that power." Claudia's expression held infinite sadness. "I am memory made flesh. Grief given purpose."
"Teach me."
"The price is heavy."
"Heavier than carrying genocide?"
Claudia smiled - the saddest smile Ora had ever seen. "No. Nothing is heavier than that. But this... this makes you carry it forever. No forgetting. No release. Every death becomes a responsibility to remember perfectly."
"I already can't forget."
"Then you're halfway there." Claudia pulled three scrolls from her robes. "Three laments. One for your sister. One for your city. One for yourself. Master these, and you'll understand how to turn trauma into transcendence."
Ora took the scrolls. They weighed nothing and everything.
"Why help me?"
"Because," Claudia said, touching Ora's corrupted cheek with impossible gentleness, "I see poetry in your pain. Your corruption writes itself across reality in verses of destruction. You're already a poet, Ashkore. You just write in screams instead of stanzas."
"I'm a monster."
"Monsters don't mourn. You do. That makes you magnificent." Claudia turned to leave, then paused. "One more thing. When I die - and I will die soon, I'm more memory than person now - all the Conceptual Locks will weaken. The ancient evils I've kept sealed will stir. You'll need to decide: become the new Keeper, or let the world face what I've hidden."
"How will I know when?"
"Every tree in every forest will sigh at once. Every flower will bloom black. Every bird will sing in minor key. And you, Child of Ash, will feel my last lament arrive." She pulled out a blank scroll. "This will reveal itself when you need it most. But using it means accepting my burden. You'll become what I am - a living memorial to the endless dead."
Ora took the scroll. "I'm already that."
"No. You're a memorial to one city's dead. I'm a memorial to every death since the First Lie. There's a difference between carrying a mountain and carrying the world."
"Why me?"
Claudia's laugh was wind through graveyard willows. "Because you're the only one who understands that power and pain are lovers, not enemies. Because you've already paid the price in blood and memories. Because..." she paused, looking at Ora with those color-shifting eyes, "because you remind me of myself, before I became more ghost than woman."
As Claudia faded back into the trees, she left Ora with one last whisper:
"Your mother would be proud. Not of what you've become, but that you're still becoming. The fact that you can still change means you're still alive. Remember that, when the weight seems unbearable."
Ora stood alone in the Sighing Woods, holding scrolls that could teach her to weaponize grief itself. Around her, every tree whispered a different name. Three million of them were from Crysillia.
She recognized every single one.
For the first time since becoming Ashkore, Ora didn't try to forget. Instead, she listened to the symphony of the lost and began to understand:
Memory wasn't a curse to bear or currency to spend.
It was a poem waiting to be written in blood, tears, and time.
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*End Chapter 14.5*
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