The wind in Ashreign always tasted like the last thing you said before you regretted it.
Cassiel tugged his coat tighter around his shoulders, boots echoing against shattered flagstones. The sky above was a muted smear of dying purples and tarnished golds, casting long, broken shadows across the city's forgotten spires.
Elior was the first to break the silence. "I don't like this. Feels like the buildings are watching."
"Good," Mirae said, flipping a coin between her fingers. "Means we're not the dumbest things out here."
Bastion, towering behind them, grunted in agreement, the massive hound at his side padding noiselessly across the dust.
They had arrived in Ashreign three nights ago, chasing whispers of a ghost — a man named Ilyan, last seen slipping between worlds, chased by things no one dared name.
And now, they stood before the remnants of the throne of Ashreign: the Broken Seat.
A relic of kings who had ruled with such ambition that even the heavens had turned their faces away, leaving their city to rot beneath their pride.
It was a jagged ruin of blackened stone and twisted iron, crowned by a throne that had been cleaved in half by something... or someone.
Cassiel stepped forward first, his breath misting.
Etched into the back of the throne were words, ancient and barely legible:
"All Kings Fall. All Thrones Break. Only Ash Remains."
Mirae rolled her eyes. "Cheery."
"No one has sat there since the Sundering," Bastion rumbled.
Cassiel knelt, brushing away dust from the foot of the throne. There, barely visible, was a sigil: two spiralling snakes biting their own tails.
He frowned. "It's the same mark we found at the Lantern Market."
"Means we're not lost," Elior offered.
"Means we're exactly where someone wants us to be," Bastion corrected grimly.
They searched the area methodically, picking through broken statues and abandoned banners. Every once in a while, they caught sight of strange shadows in the corner of their eyes, but when they turned — nothing.
It was Mirae who found the first real clue.
She crouched near an upturned stone table, pulling free a shard of crystal.
It pulsed faintly in her palm.
"Memory shard," she said, tossing it to Cassiel. "Careful. They're sensitive."
Cassiel caught it easily. As her fingers touched it, the world blurred.
In the haze of half-memory, she saw a man — cloaked, silver-haired, laughing as he ducked into a hidden alley. Behind him, two masked figures gave chase. One of them wore the colors of the Ashborne, the other... something worse.
She jerked back to reality.
"Ilyan," she said aloud, voice strangely tight.
"You saw him?" Elior asked.
She nodded. "Briefly. He was running. He knew he was being hunted."
Mirae whistled low. "Great. We're chasing someone who's better at escaping than we are at finding."
"Wouldn't be fun otherwise," Bastion muttered.
Cassiel pocketed the shard. "We follow the trail. He's left too many fingerprints not to notice."
"Where to?" Mirae asked.
Cassiel turned his gaze eastward — toward the splintered heart of Ashreign where the bells still rang for no one.
"There," she said. "To the Old Cathedral."
The journey across the city was worse than they expected.
Ashreign was not dead. It simply slept with one eye open.
Statues turned their heads when backs were turned. Bridge cables sang discordant songs when the wind blew wrong. And sometimes, the alleys whispered names that none of them dared answer to.
Mirae kept pace with a half-smile, twirling a dagger between her fingers like she was waiting for something interesting to happen.
Bastion walked like a moving wall of iron, his hound bristling at unseen things.
Elior hummed a nameless tune under his breath, a trick to keep the fear at bay.
Cassiel led them, one hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword, every step calculated, measured.
And above them, the great broken spires loomed like the ribs of a dead god.
They reached the Old Cathedral just before dusk.
It stood at the center of a dried-up riverbed, its once-magnificent arches now broken into skeletal arms reaching for a mercy that would never come.
Cassiel squinted. "You hear that?"
The bells.
Soft at first. Then louder, almost demanding.
But there was no bell-ringer. The tower had collapsed centuries ago.
The sound came from somewhere deeper.
"Magic," Mirae said simply. "Old and pissed off."
As they approached, Bastion's hound growled low in its throat.
At the cathedral doors, a figure was waiting.
Not a person.
A statue.
It had once been a knight, carved in exquisite detail. Now, its face was worn smooth by time — or perhaps something else.
In its hands, it held a sword plunged into the ground.
An offering. Or a warning.
Elior stepped closer and froze.
The statue moved.
Just slightly.
Enough for its shadow to shift and point toward a narrow crack in the cathedral's base, where the riverbed had eroded the stone into a hidden path.
Cassiel nodded once.
They entered.
The passage beneath the cathedral was worse.
Worn murals lined the walls, depicting a history no one remembered willingly: kings bleeding golden ichor, towers erupting in flame, stars falling like burning rain.
And words.
Words scrawled in languages even Mirae, who prided herself on knowing at least three dead tongues, couldn't decipher.
Elior ran a hand along one wall. His fingers came back black with soot.
"This place remembers," he whispered.
"Good," Cassiel said grimly. "We'll make it remember Ilyan."
They pushed forward, deeper and deeper, until they reached a circular chamber.
At its center stood a pedestal.
On it — a book bound in chains.
Mirae swore softly. "Why is it always a cursed book?"
Cassiel approached carefully.
The air shimmered around the book like heat over a desert.
Words floated up from its pages, hanging in the air like fireflies:
READ, AND BE REWRITTEN.
He hesitated.
And then — before anyone could stop her — Elior stepped forward and touched the book.
A crack echoed through the chamber.
The book snapped open.
The walls shuddered.
And above, in the city proper, the bells rang a single, deafening note.
When Cassiel could see again, he realized they were not alone.
Figures stood at the edges of the chamber, cloaked in ash-gray robes, their faces hidden.
The Ashborne.
One of them pointed a skeletal finger at them.
"Thieves of Memory," it hissed.
The others echoed the accusation.
"Great," Mirae muttered, drawing her dagger. "We woke the dead cult."
Bastion already had his sword out, face grim.
Cassiel drew his as well, stepping into a defensive stance.
"Stay sharp," he ordered. "Don't let them touch you."
The Ashborne moved like smoke, weaving through the darkness.
The fight was chaos.
Mirae danced between them, flashing silver and blood. Bastion carved a brutal path, his hound tearing into any that got close. Elior — reckless, brilliant Elior — sang as he fought, each note laced with magic that twisted the air.
Cassiel moved through them like a blade of willpower, cutting down those who dared approach.
But it was Mirae who saw it first.
Behind the Ashborne — a figure.
Tall. Cloaked in black shot through with burning stars.
Not Ashborne.
Something worse.
It smiled at her.
And disappeared.
When the last of the Ashborne fell, dissolving into motes of ash, the group stood gasping in the center of the ruined chamber.
The book was gone.
So was the strange figure.
Cassiel wiped blood from his cheek, heart hammering.
"This isn't just about Ilyan anymore," she said quietly.
Elior nodded, his face uncharacteristically serious. "Something else is moving. Something bigger."
Bastion looked up at the cracked ceiling where faint, impossible light leaked through.
"This city," he said, "is waking up."
And none of them were ready for what it would remember.