Caelungrift — Two Days After the Singing

The fire was dying.

Aeris Valeblume stared into the glowing coals as if they might rearrange themselves into answers. The rebel camp around her was quiet—just twenty-some runaways, refugees, and half-starved fighters too injured to hold a sword.

But Aeris didn’t see them.

She saw him.

The way he moved through ash like a memory given form.
The way he spoke—or barely did.
“I remember… too much silence.”

She traced the glyph on the back of her hand for the twentieth time that morning. It wasn’t real. It wasn't carved or burned into her skin.

But she still saw it. When she closed her eyes.

A spiral, turning inward. Infinite.

“You’re drawing again.”

Aeris blinked. The orphan girl, Lina, was peering over her shoulder.

On her lap: a crude charcoal sketch of a cloaked figure. A blade of smoke. Fire in his eyes.

“He’s too tall,” Lina said. “And scarier.”

“Scarier?” Aeris chuckled weakly. “That’s your complaint?”

“You forgot the part where his voice is… like it hurts. Like he talks with a scar.”

Aeris stilled.

That was exactly what it sounded like.

Memory Flash — Execution Square

“Sing.”

A younger Aeris stood on a raised platform, surrounded by golden-robed priests. A bound woman knelt in front of her.

The crowd was silent. The woman’s head hung.

“Weave the pain through your voice,” a priest said. “Let them feel it.”

Aeris’s voice trembled. She was only fourteen.

The woman looked up at her.

Smiled.

“I forgive you.”

The song tore free.

So did the scream.

Back to Present

Aeris clutched her throat.

It still hurt, even now.

Lina touched her sleeve gently. “Are you gonna look for him?”

She didn’t have to ask who.

Aeris stood. “Yeah. But not for me.”

Deep Beneath the Earth — Somewhere Else

Noah stood in a crypt of white stone, surrounded by relics he didn’t recognize.

A mirror. A broken watch. A child's ribbon.

His fingers hovered over each one.
No memories came.

He wasn’t sure what disturbed him more—the emptiness, or the strange ache when he held the music box.

It didn’t play. Not anymore.

A New Glyph

There was a glyph on the wall he hadn’t seen before. One that hadn’t been there when he fell asleep.

It was written in blood.

Spiral within spiral. The symbol of the Ashborn.

He stepped toward it and raised his hand.

For the first time in days… the blade didn’t respond.

Only the silence did.

Empire – Halberion Citadel

High Inquisitor Zevril leaned over a table of black glass, reading a scroll stamped with crimson wax.

Reports flooded in:

• Glyphs activating in forbidden zones

• Ash symbols seen in remote towns

• “A man who bleeds fire and walks in echoes”

“The Ashborn lives,” Zevril said quietly.

A subordinate trembled. “Orders, my Lord?”

Zevril didn’t hesitate.

“Send a Wyrmstorm unit. If he lives, the land burns.
If he’s memory… then erase him from memory.”

Camp – Sunset

Aeris watched a rebel boy convulse near the fire. He’d been stabbed earlier. Feverish, shaking, mumbling a dead lover’s name.

They didn’t have healers.

And only one person in camp had any power left.

Her.

The others looked to her silently.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t sing anymore.”

But Lina grabbed her hand.

“Don’t let another person die.”

She Sings Again

The first note cracked.

The second bled.

By the third, the boy stopped shaking.

Tears ran down Aeris’s cheeks. Her throat burned. Her lungs felt like glass.

But the boy lived.

The others stared in awe.

In the Trees — Watching

Noah stood at the edge of camp, watching the firelight play against her face.

He didn’t know her name.

But her voice reached somewhere he’d buried so deep it felt like another lifetime.

His fingers brushed the spiral glyph on his hand.

It pulsed once.

Just once.

“I don’t remember her… but something in me refuses to forget that sound.”