Chapter Eight – We Do Not Forget
Part Six – The Humming Flame
Dawn came in pieces.
No blaze of gold, no roaring sunfire to declare its triumph—just light, slow and unworried, filtering through the pines like it had all the time in the world. The trees shifted with it, soft as breath, revealing nothing and remembering everything.
Zephryn stood in the hush between.
He had not slept.
Selka hadn't left.
She sat nearby, still and calm, hands folded over her knees. Her eyes hadn't closed, but they hadn't needed to. She had seen all she needed to last night.
"You're awake," she said gently.
Zephryn nodded. "I never really stopped being."
The words were tired—but no longer hollow.
She studied him. There was color in his face again. Not warmth. Not yet. But the beginning of it.
"The fire's out," he said, glancing at the embers. "But I still hear it."
Selka didn't answer at first.
Instead, she reached into her satchel.
Pulled out a cloth-wrapped shard. Pale blue, crystal-veined, and etched with something older than names.
She unwrapped it, slowly. Held it out.
"Kaelen gave this to me after the Grinn attack," she said. "Said it fell from your sword when it struck. No pulse, no resonance. Just weight."
Zephryn stared.
He didn't reach for it.
"I wasn't sure if I should hold onto it," she continued. "But the day we buried Solara, I heard something in the dirt where we laid her down. Like a hum, buried deep. And when I held this…"
She paused.
"It hummed back."
Zephryn stepped forward. Took the shard.
It was heavier than it looked.
A memory that had been burned into matter.
"Do you know what it is?" Selka asked.
Zephryn turned it in his palm. "Not yet."
A pause.
Then, quietly:
"But I remember the sound it made when she forged it."
Selka's breath caught.
The weight of that sentence did not need explaining.
He wasn't just remembering Solara.
He was remembering a time before forgetting was law.
—
They didn't speak much as they walked.
The trees parted slowly as they left the hollow. Each step felt like rising from beneath a deep sea—vision returning, gravity shifting. The air grew cleaner, crisper, more known.
At the ridge overlooking the Lyceum's outer fields, they paused.
Below them, the Harmonic gates stood open. Birds danced in loops overhead. The wind carried faint bell tones—resonant chimes meant to guide trainees through meditation.
Zephryn stared.
The place felt smaller than he remembered.
Or maybe he had become too big for it.
"Do you want me to go first?" Selka asked.
Zephryn shook his head.
"If I wait any longer, I won't move at all."
He stepped forward.
And then paused.
"Selka."
She turned.
"Why didn't I come back sooner?"
Selka blinked.
She hadn't expected the question.
"You weren't ready," she said.
"I was. After I woke. I made it to the outskirts. I saw Kaelen's old cast mark scorched into a tree. I even heard Yolti's hum on the wind."
"But I chose not to go inside."
Selka waited.
"I told myself it was because they'd forgotten me. That the Choir had erased my name so thoroughly no one would know what I meant."
"But that wasn't it."
His voice dropped.
"I stayed away because if I came back, I'd have to admit that Solara didn't."
The wind stopped. As if the world bowed to the truth of it.
"I stayed away because I thought walking through that gate meant I was leaving her behind."
He looked up now.
"But I was wrong."
Selka's eyes glistened.
"Coming back isn't forgetting her," she said.
"It's remembering that she gave us more than pain."
"She gave us this."
She gestured to the valley. The gates. The pulse of training echoing from within.
"She gave you back to us."
Zephryn closed his eyes.
Then, quietly, he whispered:
"I'll walk with you. Just until the gate."
Selka smiled.
"Liar."
He smirked.
They stepped forward—slow, deliberate.
Together.
And as the gates of the Harmonic Lyceum rose before them, the crystal shard in Zephryn's hand pulsed—not with light, but with resonance.
Deep and ancient.
A hum that remembered everything.
The wind moved again.
And somewhere—buried deep in the world's fractured memory—
something else hummed back.