The wind on the plains of Kael'Thar did not sing. It scratched.
It passed through the broken columns and fallen arches as if it were in a hurry to forget the place. Stones covered in dark moss, runes erased by time, faceless statues — everything there seemed to have been abandoned not by enemies, but by forgetting itself. The Vaelor Guild had given us a simple mission: investigate a whisper. They said that, at dusk, someone — or something — whispered ancient names in the ruins. No one could hear clearly. Only those who got too close disappeared. No body. No trace. Only a piece of cloth, always torn, as if it had been pulled by an invisible hand.
Reward: 150 silver coins. Enough to pay off the debt with Torin and still have enough left for a week of decent wine. Enough for Liriel to stop looking at me like I was a cat that had just knocked over the honey jar.
"Whispers?" she repeated, leaning her elbow on the inn's counter, the wine cup between her fingers as if it were an extension of her hand. "You want me, a goddess who has seen the birth of stars, to go rummage through stone ruins because someone heard a whisper?"
"It's what the guild paid," I replied, avoiding her gaze. "And it's not just any whisper. It's the same name that appears on the artifacts. Zephyron."
The silence that followed was heavier than the weight of the backpack on my shoulders. Elara, who was carefully adjusting her staff, stopped. Vespera, who had leaned back in her chair with her feet on the table, slowly lowered them.
"Zephyron?" Elara whispered, almost as if she feared speaking the name.
"Yes," I said. "The Seventh General. The one you said was sealed. The one you swore was dead."
Liriel didn't drink. She didn't move. She just looked at the wine as if it could answer for her.
"He's not dead," she finally said. Her voice wasn't acidic. It wasn't sarcastic. It was… tired. "But he's not alive. Not in the way you understand. He is… an echo. A name that refuses to disappear. And now, someone is trying to wake him."
Vespera blinked. "So… the mission is: go to a haunted place, listen to a ghost whisper, and try not to die of boredom or fear? Sounds like a good Friday."
Elara looked at me. "Do you think this has to do with the artifacts? With what we found in the temple? In the cave? On the ship?"
"I don't think," I replied. "I feel. It's like everything we gathered… has been calling. And now, someone answered."
Liriel raised the cup. Drank. And then, with the same calm as before, said:
"Let's go. But if I see a shadow that looks like him, I break it. And then you all help me pay the tavern bill."
The ruins were two days' walk away. None of us spoke much along the way. Elara kept her staff close to her chest, as if she could sense the presence of the name even before seeing it. Vespera, rarely, did not make jokes. She just walked, eyes scanning the branches, the rocks, the ground — as if expecting something to move.
And when we arrived, the silence was different.
It wasn't the silence of abandonment. It was the silence of attention.
The columns rose like the broken teeth of a giant. The ground was covered by a thin mist that did not rise — it hovered, as if it had weight. And there, in the center, where there should have been an altar, there was only a circle of stones. On each one, a rune. The same runes that were on the artifacts. The same ones that had appeared on Liriel's necklace, on the forest pendant, on the ship's medallion.
And at the center of the circle, a single stone slab, clean, as if it had been polished minutes ago.
And on it, written in ancient letters, almost luminous:
"ZEPHYRON."
Elara stepped forward. "This… is not a mark. It's a call."
"Someone wrote this," Vespera said. "And it wasn't a mortal. Mortals can't make runes that shine with moonlight."
Liriel approached. Stopped a few steps away. She didn't touch it. Didn't speak. Just stared.
"He is not here," she murmured. "But he knows that we are."
A whisper.
Not loud. Not shouted. Just a breath, as if someone had whispered my name in my ear while I slept.
"Takumi…"
I turned. Nothing. Just the wind.
"Did you hear that?" I asked, my voice lower than the whisper.
Elara nodded. Her eyes were wide. "Yes."
Vespera gripped her bow. "She heard it too."
Liriel didn't answer. But the necklace she wore — the one that had become part of her, that glowed softly when she was troubled — now pulsed, slow, like a heartbeat.
"It's not a whisper of the dead," she finally said. "It's the whisper of someone who is waiting."
"Waiting for what?" I asked.
She looked at me. Not with disdain. Not with anger. With something I had never seen in her before: fear.
"Waiting for someone who can hear. Someone who has already touched what he touched. Someone who… has already been part of him."
She pointed at the slab.
"He doesn't want to be freed. He wants to be remembered."
I stayed silent. The wind went quiet. The mist shifted, slowly, as if someone were breathing.
Then, somehow, without me knowing how, the slab began to fall apart. Not in pieces. In words. Each letter loosened, floated in the air like golden ashes, and gathered around us — not as an attack, but as an offering.
And then, for an instant, I saw.
Not an image. Not a face. But a feeling.
A man. Not tall. Not imposing. He wore a simple cloak. His hands were stained with ink. And he was seated, writing on a parchment, beneath a window that opened toward a sky filled with stars. He didn't look evil. He looked… sad. Like someone who wrote a letter no one ever read.
And when he lifted his eyes — not to me, but to her — Liriel fell to her knees.
Not from force. Not from magic.
From recognition.
"Zephyron…," she whispered.
The whisper returned. Clearer. Softer.
> You came back.
And then everything vanished.
The slab disappeared. The runes were gone. The mist dissipated. The wind began to sing again, as if nothing had happened.
Except now, in my backpack, the amulet, the scepter, the orb, the crystal, the parchment — all of them — were warm. And they whispered.
Together.
As if they had just heard an answer.
Elara approached, hesitant. "What was that?"
Liriel didn't answer. She stood up slowly. The necklace glowed, but not with fear. With… longing.
"He isn't dead," she said, for the second time. "But he is trapped. And someone is trying to use him."
Vespera looked at me. "So… the mission wasn't to find the whisper. It was to discover that he was calling us."
I grabbed the backpack. My heart was beating faster than Elara's when she tries to cast a protection spell without preparing.
"Then let's find whoever is calling him," I said. "Because if someone knows where he is, and knows he can be used… then he's not just an echo."
"He's a weapon," Liriel finished.
And for the first time since I met her, she didn't smile. Didn't scoff. Didn't take a sip of wine.
She only said:
"We're going to need more than debts to pay for this, Takumi."
We walked back in silence.
But now, every step felt like a step toward something we could no longer ignore.
And when we reached the road, at twilight, I saw something that hadn't been there before.
A piece of yellowed parchment, pinned to a low branch.
It wasn't an artifact. It wasn't magical.
It was just paper.
And on that paper, in a handwriting I recognized — because I had seen it in the letter Liriel hid at the bottom of her backpack, the night she said she didn't want to tell me what happened before she fell — it was written:
"If you are reading this, then he has already called you.
The Seventh General was not defeated. He was forgotten.
And now, someone wants him to remember… who he truly was."
Elara read softly. Vespera said nothing. She only took the parchment, folded it carefully, and placed it in her pocket.
Liriel looked toward the horizon.
"He doesn't want to be remembered as a general," she said. "He wants to be remembered as a poet."
And, for the first time, I didn't think she was wrong.
Now, it was no longer about defeating an enemy.
It was about discovering who he was — before everything.
And, perhaps, what he could still become.
We had no plan.
No allies.
Only debts, artifacts, and a whisper calling us.
But, for some reason, I didn't feel fear.
Only… curiosity.
And a faint, but persistent, desire to know what the Seventh General would write, if he could write again.
"Maybe," I thought, "he's not a villain we want to defeat."
— Maybe he's a man we want to understand.
And, as absurd as it seemed, I knew that if anyone could hear that whisper, it was us.
Even if the tavern bill was still waiting.
Even if Vespera had shot an arrow into the roof of a chicken coop.
Even if Elara had fainted in the middle of the road because of a "night illumination" spell that only lit up the flowers around her.
Even if Liriel, upon seeing the moon, murmured:
"He wrote a verse about this. About the moon. And I… I forgot it."
And I, who had never heard anything more than his name, felt something heavy in my throat.
Because suddenly, it wasn't about the Seventh General anymore.
It was about what he left behind.
And about what we, by chance, had gathered.
As if we were gathering the pieces of someone we didn't know we had lost.
And, as we walked, the moon rose.
And the wind, again, whispered.
Only now, I could hear.
Not the name.
Just one word.
"Remember."
And as much as I wanted to pretend I didn't understand…
I knew.
He wasn't calling us to defeat him.
He was calling us to remember.
And maybe…
maybe that was the most dangerous thing of all.