The marsh didn't sleep.
Even as the skies dimmed and the mist thickened, there was no stillness—only a strange rhythm of distant ripples and whispering reeds. Kael had thought the Hollowing Pines were alive, but the Vireline Marsh breathed. It exhaled memories and inhaled doubt. And the longer they remained, the more the edges of the world softened, curling into something less than real.
They had traveled two days deeper into the drowned land, following the old causeways that twisted like broken ribs across shallow waters. Ruins loomed from the mire—not like the ones in the forest, overgrown and long buried, but sharp-edged and watching. Every statue they passed had its eyes turned away. Every building stood as if in shame.
Kael had not asked Liora again about the name she spoke—Brightfall. It clung to his mind like smoke, a word too ancient to be a child's invention, and far too dangerous to carry unspoken.
He knew power when he heard it.
And that name carried it like thunder held in a whisper.
They stopped at the edge of a crumbled amphitheater, half-submerged in brackish water. Pillars jutted from the muck like broken teeth, and under their feet, runes shimmered faintly through the mud—half-sunken and half-burning, pulsing in rhythm with some forgotten chant only the marsh remembered.
Liora sat near the edge, building another spiral of stones. This time she used shards of old pottery, bones from birds with too many wings, and a fragment of blue glass shaped like a tear.
Kael watched her for a long while before speaking.
"You've been here before," he said, not asking.
Liora didn't look up. "Not like this."
"You remember the tower."
"I remember how it feels." She pressed the final shard into place. "Like I left something behind."
Kael stepped closer, crouching beside her. "And the name you said. Brightfall."
Her fingers paused on the glass.
"I think it was given to me," she said slowly, "but not by people."
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know."
Her voice was steady, but the way her hand trembled gave her away. He reached out and placed his hand gently on hers. She didn't flinch—just closed her eyes and leaned slightly into his shoulder.
Kael stared out across the water, jaw clenched.
He had come to this world by mistake. A flare of magic, a rip in the sky, and the next thing he knew he'd been standing barefoot in a field of ash and silver grass. All he had wanted was to survive.
And now, somehow, he was at the center of a storm with a child whose soul seemed stitched from prophecy.
He didn't know how to protect her from what was coming. But he would die trying.
That night, the dreams returned.
He stood on a battlefield.
Not one he had ever fought in, but one that knew his name. Blades jutted from the ground like fallen stars, and the sky above churned with violet lightning. Across from him stood a woman cloaked in feathers and shadow, her eyes burning with blue fire.
She raised a hand, and the marsh appeared beneath them—twisting up from the dirt, swallowing the battlefield whole.
"Brightfall," she said, her voice like a blade drawn slow. "You were not meant to sleep."
Kael opened his mouth, but no sound came.
The woman turned to him, and her expression twisted with something that looked like pity.
"You brought her here. You lit the path. Now the stars will bleed again."
She stepped forward. Her face shifted in the lightning—sometimes old, sometimes childlike, sometimes a hollow void where no face belonged.
Then she whispered, "You are not her father."
And the dream shattered.
Kael awoke drenched in sweat, his heart a war drum in his chest.
The fire was out.
Liora was gone.
He scrambled to his feet, grabbing his spear and slinging the satchel over his shoulder. A hundred fears crashed into his mind at once, but he forced them down. She wouldn't have wandered. She wasn't reckless.
Unless something called her.
He followed her trail through the fog, across black-stoned bridges and crooked arches. The mist was heavier tonight, clinging to his skin like cobwebs. Shapes moved beyond the edges of his vision—glimmers of fireflies that didn't cast light, and silhouettes that dissolved when looked at directly.
And then he saw it—an arch of ivory and moss ahead, and beyond it, a flicker of blue flame.
Liora.
Standing at the heart of an overgrown courtyard.
Statues surrounded her—twelve in all, cloaked and crumbling, each with a hand raised to the stars. Beneath them, the ground shimmered faintly with concentric circles of ancient glyphs. She stood perfectly still, arms at her sides, her head tilted back.
As Kael stepped into the courtyard, the air changed.
The mist pulled away, and for a breathless moment, the sky above became clear.
Thousands of stars shone.
But they were wrong.
Too many. Too close. Some moved in slow spirals. Others blinked in and out of sight like forgotten thoughts. One flared bright red and cracked like a wound.
Then Liora spoke.
"Do you hear them?"
Kael didn't move.
She turned slowly toward him, eyes wide with something between awe and sorrow.
"They're calling again. The constellations—they remember me."
He stepped forward, slowly. "What are they saying?"
She looked down at her feet, where a symbol had appeared beneath her—glowing with blue-white flame. A circle enclosed by wings. A sword split by stars.
"They say the Brightfall was betrayed."
The statues around them groaned—stone shifting, cracking. One by one, they turned their faces down, and Kael saw now that each bore the same face.
Liora's.
Different ages, different expressions.
All weeping.
All watching her.
The light grew stronger, the air humming with energy.
And then—
A pulse.
Kael dropped to one knee, clutching his head as a roar filled his mind. Visions flashed behind his eyes—cities burning, thrones collapsing, a river of glass flowing uphill into a temple of fire.
And through it all—Liora, walking alone, her feet bloodied, her hands glowing with power not meant for mortals.
When it passed, the courtyard was quiet again.
Liora had collapsed in the center.
He rushed to her side, cradling her gently.
She was pale, her breathing shallow.
But her lips moved.
And he leaned close to hear her whisper.
"They lied."
Kael carried her back through the mist, never looking back at the statues.
The stars blinked out, one by one, until only darkness remained above.
They left the marsh the next morning.
No beasts followed.
No echoes called out.
Only the soft crunch of boots in drying mud, and the faintest shimmer of symbols burned into Kael's skin where the mist had touched him.
Liora remained silent, but her gaze was clear now. Focused. A little older, somehow.
They did not speak of the name again.
But something in the world had changed.
Something had awoken.
Far to the west, deep within the obsidian halls of the Midnight Keep, a seer collapsed in the middle of a vision. As her blood hit the scrying bowl, it boiled into starlight, and the knights watching screamed as their reflections melted.
At the edge of the pool, written in frost, the words etched themselves one by one:
"Brightfall has crossed the threshold. The Gate remembers."
The Conclave would march soon.
But the marsh had marked her first.
And Kael—whether father by fate or not—would be the first to stand between her and the abyss.