The forest thinned with each passing mile.

Auren walked ahead, quiet as ever. His blade now wrapped in white cloth, carried across his back. Beside him, Lyra adjusted the satchel of supplies she’d packed in haste—still unsure what path they were truly walking.

They had no map.

No destination.

Only the name of the ruins whispered by the Executioner before it died.

“Serentha.”

They stopped to rest by a pale river. The water was cold, fast-moving.
The silence between them stretched. Not heavy—but full of unspoken things.

Lyra finally broke it.

“You fought like someone who’s done it too many times. Like it wasn’t even new.”

Auren didn’t look at her.

“Because it wasn’t.”

She studied him. The way he sat—still, centered. Eyes always watching.
And yet… there was something missing. Something absent in his gaze.

“Do you remember your past life?”

He shook his head.

“Not clearly. Only instincts. Echoes. My sword remembers more than I do.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“It’s the only reason I’m still breathing.”

As they traveled deeper into the southern ridgelands, strange signs began to appear.

Burnt trees. Scorched soil.

Charred bones of beasts long dead, their shape unnatural.
Almost reptilian. Winged.

Auren knelt near one such corpse, half-buried under volcanic stone.

“This wasn’t fire,” he muttered.
“This was fury.”

That night, the sky refused to settle.

Storm clouds loomed, but not from weather—from magic.

And in his dreams… Auren saw it.

A great wing, stretched across the sky like a curtain of twilight flame.
Eyes like suns. Claws like spears.

A voice—not of speech, but of command:

“He who bears the Willbrand.
Step not into Serentha unbidden.”

He woke in sweat. Sword glowing faintly beside him.

Lyra stirred. “Another vision?”

He didn’t answer.

“No,” he finally said.
“A warning.”

The next day, they reached the outskirts of Serentha.

Or what remained of it.

Stone towers crumbled into mist. The very ground groaned beneath them.
Ash covered the earth in a soft layer—not of time, but of something recently burned.

A single pillar stood among the rubble.

Upon it, scratched in clawed script far too ancient for any human tongue, were the words:

"When the gods forgot the dragons, the dragons remembered."

And somewhere, hidden deep beneath the ruins...

Something began to stir.

Scales shifted.

Eyes opened.

Old memories clawed their way back to the surface.

“The past does not die.
It sleeps beneath ash,
waiting for a name to awaken it.”
                                   — Fragment from the Serentha Inscription Tablets