Episode 43: "The Ones Who Remember"
Scene opens: Nightfall at the edge of the Hollow.
The fire crackled. Kael's team, bruised and exhausted, sat in a makeshift camp. The air was cold, but calm.
Tunde lay with his head on a mossy log. "We should retire. Find a quiet village, open a potion shop…"
Felix stirred the pot of soup. "With your brewing skills? You'd poison half the realm."
Rhea chuckled softly from her perch on a rock. Lana didn't laugh. She just stared into the fire, her thoughts far away—as usual lately. Kael noticed.
He reached over and brushed her hand. She didn't pull away.
"I'm here," he whispered.
"I know," she whispered back, but her voice was tight.
Then—
A loud rip tore the sky open.
A black vortex spiraled in midair. From it, creatures like rotting demons, their bodies half-bone and half-charred flesh, zoomed downward—fast, screeching with hunger.
The team sprang up just as the first creature slammed into the ground, claws digging into the earth. Dozens more followed, flooding the clearing.
"ZOMBIE DEMONS!" Tunde shouted, grabbing a blade.
Rhea summoned her twin flames.
Lana spun, throwing knives laced with light spells.
Kael raised Velmorth'Rael, lightning exploding with his every strike. The demon-zombies hissed, dodged, and some even regenerated after being slashed.
Felix backed toward the tree line, drawing summoning circles mid-air. "These things... they don't die easy!"
And then—
A portal opened. Not in the sky, but from the earth.
From its swirling green center stepped two witches and one wizard.
They were unlike anything the team had ever seen.
They didn't just look old—they felt old. Robes made from celestial webbing, skin covered in moving runes. Eyes glowing like molten time.
Each held a wand forged from starbone and demon root.
The tallest witch spoke, voice layered with echoes.
"You wield weapons you don't understand… children."
Kael turned, sword raised. "Who the hell are you?"
The wizard stepped forward, tapping his wand once to the ground. "We are the Ones Who Remember."
Felix gasped. "No… that's a myth. They vanished 3,800 years ago."
"Forgotten," the second witch said, "but never gone."
With a flick of her wrist, Kael was thrown backward into a tree—lightning useless. Lana charged, only to be caught mid-air, frozen in a magical prism.
"LANA!" Kael shouted.
Tunde and Rhea combined spells again, sending a huge flaming vortex at the trio. It was instantly snuffed out—like a candle.
Then Rhea screamed as her wand shattered in her hand.
Felix tried to run in and help—but the wizard muttered a word, and vines made of pure shadow erupted from the ground and bound him.
One by one, the team was overpowered and captured.
"Let them go!" Kael growled, struggling against the chains now wrapped around his wrists, forged from some otherworldly ore.
The first witch walked to him and whispered, "You carry a blade that was never meant for this time… and you… you, boy, are the key to everything."
Kael's eyes burned. "I'll kill you all."
The wizard chuckled. "Perhaps. But not today."
With a wave of their hands, the entire team vanished—sucked into the earth through a crumbling portal, like being swallowed by the ancient world itself.
Scene fades:
The fire dies out. Silence returns to the clearing.
But a small shimmer of magic remains where Rhea's wand broke—a pulse. A heartbeat. Something… remembering.