The moment Ilyan touched the relic — the moment the shard of frozen memory rose from the obelisk — the silence shattered.
The amphitheater groaned like a beast waking from centuries of sleep. The runes at his feet bled light. And from the collapsed archways surrounding the ruin, they emerged.
Figures. Shrouded in stitched rags and bone masks, their limbs too long, their movements stuttering like broken clockwork. Their eyes — if they had eyes — burned dimly through their masks with lightless hunger.
One. Then three. Then seven.
All wordless.
All wrong.
The relic pulsed, and the journal hissed against his hip.
"TRUTH REVEALS. DEBT FOLLOWS."
Ilyan ran.
The amphitheater twisted under his feet — geometry bending, spiraling in impossible curves. The relic floated alongside him, tethered by unseen strings. He leapt over a broken altar, ducked behind a half-fallen pillar, breathing so hard it hurt. His heartbeat drowned out thought.
The first creature dropped in front of him. No warning. Just sudden, stuttering presence.
It swung — not with grace, but with momentum, like a hammer dropped from heaven.
Ilyan barely dodged. The ground cracked where the blow landed.
He rolled. Staggered. Pulled his dagger free.
The fight was clumsy.
He slashed, missed. Swung again — hit fabric, not flesh. The creature grabbed him with a hand like calcified wire and hurled him against stone.
Pain. Blinding. His side screamed.
He crawled, clutching the dagger with white-knuckled desperation. A second one stepped forward, hissing through its teeth.
They weren't mindless. They remembered something.
It was no duel. It was survival.
He cut one across the leg. It shrieked in static and slammed him down.
His vision doubled. Blood filled his mouth. He could feel something crack in his ribs.
Still, he moved.
Still, he stood.
Still, he protected the relic.
Even as the monsters closed in — not just to kill, but to unmake — Ilyan wrapped his body around the relic's glow and whispered something soft:
"I don't want to lose it. Not yet."
They lunged.
Then everything stopped.
—
The temperature dropped in a single breath.
The amphitheater dimmed. The shadows… folded inward.
One of the creatures turned.
Then screamed.
It unraveled — a cord pulled too hard, its form breaking like thread. The second fell backward, clawing at air. A note hummed through the stone — a perfect, single chord that made Ilyan's teeth hurt.
And from the ruin's upper edge, a figure stepped into view.
Cloaked. Pale. Calm.
She descended the broken steps like one walking through fog.
In one hand, she carried a spool of glowing thread.
The other held a needle like a dagger.
With two swipes, she cut the last remaining creatures down, their bodies unmaking as if they had never been written into the world in the first place.
She approached Ilyan without haste.
Kneeling beside him, she didn't speak — just pressed a hand to his forehead.
A shimmer of light passed between them.
"Your tether is weak," she said at last. Her voice was a whisper of glass on cloth. "But not broken."
"Who…?" Ilyan croaked.
"Not yet your answer," she replied, brushing blood from his brow. "But soon. My name is Ashwen."
The relic pulsed again.
Ashwen looked at it and frowned.
"They've noticed you now," she murmured. "It won't be quiet again."
She stood. Turned to leave.
"Wait," Ilyan called. "Why help me?"
She looked over her shoulder. Her eyes — silver, unreadable — didn't blink.
"Because it was written," she said simply. "And I no longer like what was written."
Then she vanished — not by magic, but by slipping into the seams of the ruin, as if she had never been there.
Ilyan lay still.
The pain was unbearable. His hand clutched the relic. Blood soaked his side. His head throbbed.
But he smiled.
He was still alive.
The journal glowed, opening on its own.
"One thread saved. One hand offered. Not all riddles wear masks."
Continue walking. There is more to forget."
The dust was beginning to settle.
Ashwen had vanished through the broken veil of ruin, leaving silence behind like a folded memory. Ilyan sat up, wincing with every breath. The relic pulsed beside him, faint now, as though hiding.
She had saved him. Without reason, without explanation.
And now she was gone.
He stood. Stumbled. Nearly fell again.
The world spun around him — blood loss, fractured ribs, exhaustion that blurred the sky. But something in him wouldn't let him stay. Maybe it was pride. Maybe it was something worse:
Hope.
He followed her footprints through the crumbling corridor, half-faded in the ash. It took longer than it should have. He nearly passed out twice. But eventually, beneath a low arch of twisted metal and vine, he found her.
Ashwen was sitting on a cracked stone, her form silhouetted by the dim light that filtered through the broken ceiling. Her ash-blonde hair, streaked with dark roots, framed her face like the remnants of a storm. Her eyes — silver, reflective, and cold as moonlight — seemed to see something beyond him, something unseen. She was tall and lean, her movements sharp and calculated, almost as if she were part of the ruined city around her.
She wore a long, dark cloak that swirled with forgotten symbols, the edges tattered as though time itself had worn them away. Her hands were covered by long gloves, the fingertips seemingly laced with threads of some invisible material — threads that seemed to vibrate softly in the air around her.
She looked up at him, silent as always, and Ilyan couldn't shake the feeling that the world around her shifted just slightly, as though reality itself bent in her presence.
"You shouldn't be standing," she said without turning. Her fingers pulled invisible strings from the void, weaving them into nothing.
"You left me bleeding."
"You were not dead."
"Close."
Ashwen paused. Glanced back.
"…But not dead."
Ilyan leaned against the wall, breathing hard. "You saved me. Why?"
She didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she asked, "Why follow me?"
"I didn't want to die alone."
She didn't smile — but something flickered across her face. Not quite pity. Not quite surprise.
"You should go back to the Concord. You have someone waiting."
Ilyan wiped blood from his lip. "I'd rather go with you."
Ashwen blinked slowly. "You don't even know what I am."
"I don't think you do either."
That made her still.
She stood, brushing off her cloak.
"You won't survive with me," she said flatly.
"I didn't survive without you."
"You don't know what I carry, Concord boy."
"Then let me help carry it."
Silence.
Longer this time.
"You're bleeding out," she said finally, not unkindly.
"I'm stubborn," he replied.
"Stubborn people die young."
"Selfish people die older but alone."
"…Is that your goal?"
"No. Just… trying to figure out what kind of dying I want."
Ashwen turned fully now, the strands of invisible thread unraveling behind her.
She looked at him — properly, deeply — for the first time.
Not the broken boy. Not the bearer of a relic. But something else.
"You think helping me will help you?"
Ilyan met her gaze. "No. I think helping you… is me."
She exhaled slowly. It might have been a sigh.
"…You're an idiot," she said.
"I've heard."
She crossed the distance in a few strides and held out a hand.
"Fine. I'll help you back. But after that—"
"I vanish, I know," he said. "You're good at that."
She didn't reply.
Just helped him walk.
Together, they moved out of the Ruins of the Bound. Through cracked stone, fading echoes, and the slow unravel of silence.
And though Ashwen said nothing more, she didn't let go of his arm the whole way.