Chapter 1 – Ash and Bloom
The rain in Mirror Hollow didn't fall. It hung. Each droplet suspended mid-air, swaying like glass pendulums, as if the world couldn't decide whether to wash itself clean or drown in what it remembered.
Anterz stood beneath a broken archway, watching the impossible storm. The ruined cathedral behind him groaned under the weight of time. Ivy crept up its walls, curling around statues of faceless angels and saints who no longer had names.
He did not wear his sword.
He hadn't touched Valteris in weeks.
And the world hadn't ended.
Not yet.
---
A few children ran through the old market square—laughing, barefoot, dragging ribbons through the rain like paintbrushes. Their parents watched from stalls still half-crushed by the towerquake, their eyes wary but not afraid.
People were rebuilding.
Not like before. Not with chants or kings or gods.
With hammers. With hands.
Anterz felt something deep in his chest.
It wasn't hope. Not quite.
Just… stillness.
The kind that came after fire.
"Found you," a voice said behind him.
He turned slowly.
Elaria stood at the edge of the archway, cloak soaked, a bundle of dried flowers in her arms. Her hair was tied back now, short and jagged, the way she'd cut it after the Tower fell.
"Didn't realize you'd gone this far west," she said, stepping beside him.
"Didn't realize you'd be looking," he replied.
"I always look. You're not subtle."
"I try not to be."
"Failing beautifully."
She handed him the flowers. He didn't take them.
"What are these?"
"They're called Solkiss. They only bloom where ash once fell."
He looked at her.
"They're new," she added, almost proud. "They didn't exist before the Tower fell. No one remembers planting them. They just… happened."
He took the flowers. Held them. Said nothing.
---
They walked through the square in silence.
The townsfolk nodded at Anterz as he passed. One even bowed. He flinched.
Elaria didn't mention it.
Instead, she said: "There's a woman three villages north who breathes fire. Not illusion. Real fire. She says it comes from her dreams."
Anterz frowned. "Another fracture?"
"Feels like it." She paused. "But not like before."
They walked past a mural painted on the side of an old apothecary: a man holding a sword aloft, haloed in red light.
He looked familiar.
Too familiar.
Elaria didn't stop walking.
Neither did he.
---
They found a quiet corner of the ruined church and sat beneath a stained glass window that no longer held any glass. Wind howled through the bones of the building.
"You're different," she said.
"I chose something."
"And now?"
"Now I try to live with it."
Elaria leaned her head back.
"I dreamed again last night."
"Of the gods?"
"No. Of you. But not you-you. You as a statue. The people were praying to it."
Anterz didn't answer.
She turned to him.
"It scared me."
He looked at the floor.
"It scares me too."
---
Later, as the sun broke through the rainclouds in slashes of gold, a messenger arrived.
A girl in leather boots and a crooked smile, her tunic burned at the hem.
"You're the swordless one, right?" she asked.
Anterz raised an eyebrow.
"I have a message," the girl said. "From a town called Drear's Hollow. They want him."
She pointed.
"Someone's doing miracles there. Real ones. People floating. Fire singing. Said to tell you: 'The Echo is here. It remembers you.'"
She dropped a scrap of parchment and vanished into the street crowd.
Anterz unfolded it.
Just one word:
"COME"
---
They left that night.
---
The road to Drear's Hollow cut through burnt fields and silver grass that shimmered like water. Anterz walked with Valteris still sheathed and slung in cloth, silent on his back.
The blade hadn't spoken since the Tower.
He didn't ask why.
Elaria rode a tired mule she'd named Coal. She hummed softly to herself—some tune Anterz didn't recognize.
At sunset, they made camp near an old stone well where a single tree had grown straight from the middle of it—its bark black, its leaves white as bone.
Elaria sat near the fire, twisting a Solkiss flower between her fingers.
"They're growing everywhere now," she said. "No seeds. No root."
Anterz nodded.
"They're not of this world," he said. "They're of the world that's becoming."
---
He dreamed that night.
But it wasn't of the Tower.
It was of himself.
Standing in a field of flowers that whispered as they bloomed. Not in words—but in names.
Each petal bore a memory.
Each scent, a death.
He walked through the field, but the more he stepped, the more the flowers began to wilt.
Until he stood alone.
And in the distance, a child with silver eyes asked,
> "Why did you let me remember?"
---
He woke before dawn.
The fire was low.
Elaria was watching him. She looked like she hadn't slept.
"You heard them too," she said.
He nodded.
They both looked toward the road.
Drear's Hollow waited.
---
They arrived just after midday.
The town had once been a mine camp, then a village, then a ruin. Now, it was something… new.
Windchimes made of bone hung from the eaves.
Paintings of the sun—fractured and bleeding—covered doors.
And everywhere, there were songs. Low, rhythmic hums. No lyrics. Just vibration.
The villagers gathered when they arrived.
One by one, they turned.
One by one, they knelt.
Not to Anterz.
To the figure at the center of the square.
A woman in white robes, hair braided with gold threads. She glowed.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
She floated two feet off the ground, her bare feet untouched by dust.
Her eyes were molten amber.
"You came," she said.
Anterz looked at her.
And then he saw it.
Beneath her skin, something pulsed.
A sliver of light.
A fracture.
She walked toward him.
And smiled.
"We've been waiting for you, Ruin-Bearer."
---
Elaria moved beside him. Her voice sharp.
"What are you?"
The woman tilted her head.
"I'm what you left behind."
She raised her hand.
And the town behind her whispered in one voice:
> "We remember the gods. We remember you. Let us begin again."
---
Anterz took one step forward.
He didn't draw Valteris.
He didn't raise his hand.
He just asked:
> "Are you the first?"
The woman smiled wider.
"No."
"I'm the easiest."
---