Wind whispered through the hollowed bones of the Ashen Grove, each tree hollowed and charred by decades of unseen fire. The hush was unnatural—no birdsong, no rustle of life. Just the low sigh of branches swaying like mourners around a pyre.
Kaelen walked at the front, his boots sinking into the blackened loam with each careful step. The lantern at his side glowed a pale blue, casting flickers against trunks carved with runes too old for even the elders to remember. Beside him, Niva strode silently, her blade unsheathed, its edge catching the same blue light, reflecting ghostfire.
"This place hates the living," Niva said, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Then it's a good thing we're not quite alive," Kaelen muttered, eyes fixed on the narrow path ahead.
They had been walking since dusk, seeking the Thorned Shrine said to rise only for those who carried grief like a second soul. It was where the Blackroot pact had been sealed long ago—where promises turned to poison.
Kaelen's thoughts turned to Thalen, his brother. A memory surfaced—Thalen's hands stained with ink and blood, the parchment trembling as he wrote a name he should never have known. That same name now echoed in Kaelen's veins, binding him to this cursed quest.
The trees grew denser. Shapes flitted between them—too tall for wolves, too graceful for spirits. Kaelen tightened his grip on the lantern.
"They're watching," Niva murmured. "Waiting."
"For what?"
"For you to remember."
Kaelen stopped at a jagged arch of stone half-swallowed by ivy and ash. The air buzzed faintly—a pressure behind the eyes, like holding one's breath too long beneath water.
"The Thorned Shrine?" Niva asked.
Kaelen didn't answer. He knelt, brushing away debris from the base of the arch, revealing a spiral etched into the foundation. The moment his fingers traced its edges, the lantern dimmed to near-darkness. Then flared.
A narrow stairway unfolded before them—steps sinking downward into the earth. Kaelen exchanged a look with Niva, and without a word, they descended.
The shrine was not a place. It was a wound.
Roots arched above like ribs. The walls wept a slow, glimmering sap, as if the earth itself bled memory. At the center, a pedestal of obsidian. Upon it, a thorn—a single black spike, encased in crystal.
Kaelen's breath caught. This was it. The last tether to what Thalen had become.
He stepped forward. The crystal pulsed, reacting to his presence. Behind him, Niva's voice broke through the silence.
"You don't have to—"
"I do." His hand hovered above the relic. "He gave himself to the Blackroot so I wouldn't have to. I won't let it be for nothing."
He touched the crystal.
Agony.
Memories not his own slammed into Kaelen's mind—Thalen's screams echoing through root-choked tunnels, his eyes black with regret, his voice calling out to gods that had long turned their backs. Kaelen staggered, clutching the pedestal, the thorn thrumming under his palm.
The shrine faded. In its place: Thalen's final moments.
A forest of bleeding trees. A circle of cloaked figures. A binding pact etched into bone and bark. Thalen offering a piece of his soul in exchange for power to save Kaelen's life.
He had paid with everything.
Kaelen gasped, falling to his knees. The vision faded, and he was back beneath the earth, the thorn now in his hand—its crystal prison shattered.
"You're bleeding," Niva said, kneeling beside him.
"Not my blood," he whispered, staring at the thorn. "His."
The shrine trembled. Roots cracked. The earth above groaned as if something ancient stirred. Niva pulled Kaelen to his feet.
"We have to go."
Kaelen nodded, the thorn wrapped in cloth and tucked against his chest.
As they ran, the shrine collapsed behind them, dust and grief closing the path.
The sky had turned lavender by the time they emerged, breathless, from the Ashen Grove. A fine soot coated their skin, as though the grove had marked them for what they had taken.
Kaelen didn't speak. His hands trembled with something deeper than exhaustion. In his chest, the thorn beat like a second heart.
They made camp in silence. Niva lit a small fire—barely more than embers—and handed Kaelen a flask. He drank, the liquid harsh and bitter.
"Will you tell the others?" she asked.
"Eventually." He stared into the fire. "When I know what this means."
Niva poked at the flame, then glanced up, her expression softer than he expected. "He loved you, you know."
Kaelen nodded. "I know. That's why this hurts."
A silence fell—not heavy, but reverent. Kaelen pulled the wrapped thorn from his cloak and held it up. The firelight caught on the black surface, casting tiny shadows that danced across his face.
"I saw his last thoughts," he said. "He died wishing I wouldn't follow him. And now I've brought his pain back with me."
"Or maybe you brought it home."
Kaelen looked up. In the dark above, a single star pierced the gloom. Faint. Defiant.
He smiled.
They traveled west the next day, the thorn sealed in a copper tube slung beneath Kaelen's cloak. Birds returned to the skies, tentative and few. The Ashen Grove's silence no longer clung to them.
At dusk, they reached the first village—Stonewater, built against the cliffs. Children played near the well, their laughter incongruous against the quiet burden Kaelen carried. Niva checked the horses while Kaelen walked alone to the edge of the cliff.
The sea stretched wide, indigo and gold under the fading sun.
Kaelen sat on the rocks, the copper tube in his lap. He didn't open it. Didn't need to. Thalen's presence was there—in the weight of the tube, in the wind brushing his cheek, in the ache just behind his ribs.
He closed his eyes.
"Do you forgive me?" he whispered. "Would you, if you knew what I've done?"
The sea said nothing.
But a gull cried overhead, loud and bright, and in that moment, Kaelen imagined it was laughter—Thalen's laughter, half-mocking, half-loving. The kind he'd only heard when they were boys, running through the salt-crusted dunes before the world asked them to bleed.
Kaelen opened his eyes.
He stood, shoulders squared, and turned back to the village.
They stayed in Stonewater only a night. At dawn, the path ahead curved inland toward the Orrian border, where the remnants of the Blackroot's influence still festered in fractured stone and cursed wells.
Niva rode ahead, scouting. Kaelen let his horse move slow, letting the rhythm of hooves soothe the crackling pressure behind his eyes. Every now and then, his hand would brush against the tube under his cloak. The thorn pulsed faintly, a heartbeat of memory.
They passed a broken shrine along the roadside—moss-covered, its goddess long forgotten. Kaelen paused, dismounted. He placed a pebble on the altar, a boyhood habit he hadn't indulged in years.
"For him," he said.
A breeze stirred the wildflowers growing from the cracks.
That night, as they made camp beside a stream, Kaelen told Niva the story—everything. Thalen's choice, the forbidden pact, the shrine of thorns. She listened without interruption, save for the soft crackle of fire.
When he finished, she said, "You carry him well."
Kaelen looked into the flame. "I'm tired of carrying ghosts."
"Then let's build something they'd be proud of."
He smiled, the weariness lightened, if only slightly.
Two days later, they reached the Blackroot's edge—the blight-marked hills where no birds flew, and the grass crunched like glass. The land here remembered the pain of bargains struck in desperation.
Kaelen felt it in his bones.
They approached an old watchtower, crumbled to one side, half-swallowed by ivy. Beneath it was a cellar—a hidden archive where, once, the Brotherhood had stored forbidden tomes. Niva unlocked the rusted hatch with a whispered charm.
Inside: dust, scrolls, and silence.
Kaelen knelt before a cracked pedestal and placed the copper tube atop it. He whispered Thalen's name.
A blue glow lit the room. The thorn shimmered within its casing, vibrating softly before settling still.
The air changed. Lighter.
Kaelen stood. "He's at rest."
Niva nodded. "And what about you?"
He considered that. "Getting there."
They climbed back into the light, and as the sun broke through thick clouds, Kaelen turned to see a field of ashflowers blooming near the ruin's base—soft violet against charred soil.
He bent, plucked one.
For the first time in months, he felt warmth.
They set out the next morning with no clear destination, only the road and a map marked in charcoal lines and memory.
Kaelen found himself humming. A melody from childhood, rough and tuneless but familiar. Niva raised an eyebrow, amused.
"That's new."
"Figured I'd see if my lungs still worked for something other than sighs."
Their laughter echoed through the still air, startling a flock of birds into flight. For a moment, the sky was alive with wings.
Later that day, they reached a crossroad with no signpost—just three paths veering into woods, cliffs, and hills. Kaelen looked to Niva.
"Left feels wrong," she said.
"Middle looks dull."
"Right, then."
"Right," Kaelen agreed.
As they walked, Kaelen glanced back one last time.
In the distance, the Ashen Grove was only a dark smudge against the horizon. He could almost imagine Thalen standing at its edge, arms crossed, smiling.
"You'd tell me this was foolish," Kaelen whispered.
And in his heart, the reply came, warm and quiet: But I'd follow you anyway.
By the time twilight deepened, they found a hollow beneath a leaning willow and made camp. The fire crackled low, casting shadows that danced like gentle spirits.
Kaelen laid back on his bedroll, hands behind his head, staring up through the branches. Stars blinked into view, shy at first, then bold.
Niva returned from gathering wood, a bundle under her arm. "You look almost peaceful."
"I am. Almost."
She sat beside him. "Still feel him?"
"Yes. But it's different now. Less like a wound. More like a scar."
Silence fell again, this time easy.
Then Niva pulled a small book from her pack. "Thalen wrote this. I took it from the archive."
Kaelen's breath hitched. She handed it to him.
The leather was cracked. The ink faint. But the first page held a familiar phrase: For Kaelen, when he's ready to forgive himself.
He clutched it to his chest.
The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks into the night. One drifted upward, catching the wind, until it disappeared among the stars.
Kaelen smiled through tears.
"Goodnight, brother."
Kaelen woke before dawn, the dream still clinging to the edges of sleep. Thalen had been there, laughing—not the pained, desperate sound from their final days, but true laughter. Joyful. Whole.
He sat up, the book still in his arms.
Niva stirred. "Bad dream?"
"No. Just… not ready to let it go yet."
The sky was painted in soft hues—rose and gold bleeding into the edges of the dark. They packed in silence, both unwilling to break the hush that felt like a benediction.
Before mounting, Kaelen took one last look at the willow. He tied the ashflower to a low branch, a marker of memory and mercy.
Then they rode.
Fields passed, then rivers. Hills gave way to valley. The road ahead was long, but Kaelen's heart no longer felt like a stone in his chest.
At midday, they stopped near a stream, and Kaelen opened Thalen's book. He read aloud:
"Hope is not the absence of grief, but the willingness to carry it forward."
Niva touched his arm. "Then let's carry it together."
He nodded.
And the wind carried them on.