The shadows at the edge of the clearing shivered.

  Liraeth's knuckles whitened around the staff as its sigils flared in warning. The firelight guttered, plunging them into near-darkness. Across the dying flames, Sorin's dagger flashed silver as he rose into a crouch.

  "Not again," he muttered.

  The Exiled One didn't draw his sword. Not yet. His fingers hovered over the hilt as he tilted his head, listening to something none of them could hear.

  Then—movement.

  Figures emerged from the treeline, their forms wavering like heat haze. Tall. Too tall. Their elongated limbs ended in too many joints, their ashen skin stretched taut over bones that didn't sit right beneath the surface.

  Liraeth's breath caught.

  She knew them.

  Not their names. Not their purpose. But the way they moved—that unnatural, gliding gait—it sent a jolt of recognition through her that had nothing to do with memory and everything to do with instinct.

  The lead figure stopped at the edge of the firelight. Its face—if it could be called a face—was smooth and featureless save for two pits where eyes should have been. Black liquid seeped from them in slow, viscous trails.

  Sorin shifted his weight. "Anyone have a clever plan?"

  The Exiled One's voice was barely a whisper. "Don't move."

  The figure's head tilted. Its mouth split open vertically, revealing a darkness that swallowed the firelight whole. When it spoke, the words came from everywhere and nowhere at once, vibrating through the ground and the air and the spaces between Liraeth's ribs.

  "She is waking."

  Liraeth's vision doubled.

  The clearing vanished.

  Suddenly she was standing in a vast, circular chamber, its walls lined with towering mirrors. No—not mirrors. Panes of ice so clear they might have been windows to other worlds. In each one, a different version of herself stared back.

  A warrior in bloodstained armor.

  A scholar bent over ancient texts.

  A corpse floating in black water.

  And in the center of the room, a boy with golden eyes and a smile that didn't reach them.

  "You're late," he said.

  Liraeth reached for him—

  —and the world snapped back into focus as Sorin yanked her behind him.

  "Whatever you're selling," he snarled at the figures, "we're not buying."

  The lead creature's neck elongated, its head swaying like a serpent's as it studied them. Then, with a sound like dry leaves scraping against stone, it knelt.

  The others followed.

  The Exiled One sucked in a sharp breath.

  Liraeth's staff pulsed in time with her heartbeat, its light painting the creatures in flickering gold. Their bowed heads. Their too-long fingers pressed to the earth. Their—

  Oh.

  They weren't kneeling to her.

  They were kneeling to the staff.

  "Daughter of the Last Sun," the lead figure intoned. "The Hollow Star waits."

  Then, as one, they dissolved into ash.

  The silence that followed was louder than any scream.

  Sorin was the first to speak. "What the actual fuck?"

  Liraeth looked down at the staff. At the sigils that still glowed faintly against her palm.

  At the single, perfect handprint burned into the metal near the base.

  Her handprint.

  From another life.

  The Exiled One's sword finally left its sheath. "We need to move. Now."

  But Liraeth couldn't look away from the staff. From the truth staring back at her.

  She had wielded this before.

  And whatever it was awakening inside her—

  —the world remembered.

  The fire had died to embers by the time they moved.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Sorin kept his dagger drawn, his gaze darting between the trees as if expecting the ashen figures to rematerialize at any moment. The Exiled One had already packed their supplies with swift, efficient motions, his expression unreadable beneath his tattered hood.

  Only Liraeth remained still, her fingers tracing the grooves of the handprint on the staff.

  She is waking.

  The words slithered through her mind like a half-remembered dream.

  Sorin nudged her boot with his. "Hey. You still in there?"

  She blinked, the weight of his stare pulling her back. His jaw was tight, his usual smirk absent.

  "You saw them too, right?" he asked, quieter now. "Not just some... hallucination?"

  The Exiled One answered before she could. "They were real." His voice was gravel, rough with something Liraeth couldn’t place—fear? Recognition? "Ashen Watchers. The last guardians of the Sunspire."

  Sorin’s grip tightened on his dagger. "And they just—what? Bowed to a stick?"

  "Not to the staff," Liraeth murmured. "To what it represents."

  The Exiled One went very still.

  Sorin exhaled sharply. "Care to enlighten the rest of us?"

  She opened her mouth, but no words came. How could she explain the ice-mirror chamber? The golden-eyed boy? The versions of herself—so many versions—staring back from fractured reflections?

  The Exiled One saved her from answering. "We’re not safe here." He slung his pack over his shoulder. "The Watchers were a warning. Others will come."

  "Others?" Sorin’s laugh was razor-edged. "You mean more of those things?"

  "Worse." The Exiled One’s gaze flicked to Liraeth, then away. "The Hollow King’s echoes."

  A chill crawled down Liraeth’s spine.

  Sorin went rigid. "What does that mean?"

  No answer.

  The wind shifted, carrying the scent of damp earth and something else—something metallic, like old blood. Liraeth’s staff pulsed again, its light flickering uneasily.

  Then, from the darkness beyond the trees, a sound.

  A whisper.

  A name.

  "Aeris."

  Sorin’s breath hitched.

  The Exiled One’s sword flashed in the moonlight.

  And Liraeth—

  Liraeth remembered.

  The whisper curled around them like smoke, slithering between the trees.

  "Aeris."

  Sorin’s dagger clattered to the ground. His hands—steady a moment before—shook violently. "No," he breathed. "That’s not—"

  Liraeth barely had time to react before he whirled on her, his fingers digging into her shoulders. His eyes were wild, pupils dilated. "Don’t listen to it." His voice was raw, desperate. "Whatever it’s trying to do—whatever you think you remember—"

  She tried to pull away, but his grip tightened. "Sorin—"

  "Don’t." His breath came in ragged bursts. "You’re Liraeth. Not—not her."

  The Exiled One moved like a shadow, wrenching Sorin back. "Enough."

  Sorin stumbled, catching himself against a tree. His chest heaved, his gaze locked onto Liraeth as if she might vanish before him.

  The name still hung in the air between them.

  Aeris.

  Liraeth’s throat tightened. She didn’t know that name. And yet—

  —yet—

  Her vision blurred.

  The clearing dissolved.

  She stood at the edge of a balcony, the wind tugging at her hair. Below, the city sprawled in glittering tiers, bathed in the light of a dying sun. The air smelled of salt and burning incense.

  "You’re brooding again."

  The voice came from behind her—warm, teasing. Familiar.

  She didn’t turn. "I’m not brooding. I’m thinking."

  "Same thing."

  Boots scuffed against stone as he came to stand beside her. Golden eyes. A smile that didn’t reach them. The boy from the ice-mirrors—older now, but still too young for the weight pressing on his shoulders.

  Kael.

  The name surfaced from somewhere deep, like a fish breaking through dark water.

  He nudged her shoulder. "You’re worried about him."

  She didn’t have to ask who he meant. "He’s hiding something."

  "He’s the Hollow King. He’s always hiding something." Kael’s grin faltered. "But he loves you."

  She turned her face away. "That’s what frightens me."

  Liraeth gasped, the memory tearing away like a bandage ripped from a wound.

  Sorin was in front of her again, his hands framing her face. His lips moved, but the words were muffled, drowned beneath the roar of blood in her ears.

  The staff burned in her grip.

  The Exiled One’s voice cut through the haze. "Move!"

  Something shattered the silence—a wet, tearing sound, like flesh parting from bone.

  The trees bent.

  And from the darkness between them, a figure emerged.

  Tall. Crowned in shadow.

  Its face was a hollow mimicry of a man’s, its mouth stitched shut with threads of blackened sinew.

  The Exiled One’s sword flashed. "Hollow King’s echo."

  Sorin went deathly still.

  The creature’s head tilted. Then, with a sound like breaking glass, its stitches split.

  And it spoke.

  "You promised me a world, thief."

  The voice wasn't sound—it was rupture, a fracture in the air itself that made Liraeth's teeth ache.

  Sorin staggered back as if struck. "I—" His hands flew to his temples, fingers digging into his own skin. "That's not me."

  The Hollow King's echo took another step forward. Its body warped, shadows stretching and snapping back like overtaut wire. Where its feet touched the ground, the earth blackened, curling inward as if burned by invisible fire.

  The Exiled One moved between them, his sword humming with a low, silver light. "Don't listen," he warned. "It's not real."

  But Liraeth could see it in Sorin's face—the way his pupils swallowed the gold of his irises, the way his breath came too fast. He recognized that voice.

  The echo's stitched mouth twitched. "Liar," it whispered—and this time, the word slithered from Sorin's own lips.

  Liraeth's staff flared white-hot in response.

  She was running. The corridors of the Sunspire blurred around her, the air thick with smoke and the metallic tang of blood. Somewhere ahead, steel clashed—the desperate, uneven rhythm of a battle already lost.

  She rounded the corner—

  —and froze.

  The throne room was in ruins. The great stained-glass windows lay in shattered heaps, their colors muted beneath layers of ash. And there, at the center, knelt the Hollow King, his crown lying broken beside him.

  But it was the figure standing over him that made her breath catch.

  Herself.

  Armor drenched in blood. The Dawnspear trembling in her grip.

  The other Liraeth's voice was raw with grief. "You were supposed to save him."

  The Hollow King lifted his head. His eyes—Sorin's eyes—were full of tears.

  "I tried."

  The vision shattered as the echo lunged.

  Sorin moved without thinking—his body twisting, his dagger flashing up in a brutal arc. The blade bit into the creature's outstretched arm, and black ichor sprayed across the forest floor. It hissed like acid eating through stone.

  The echo didn't scream. It laughed, the sound bubbling wetly from its ruined mouth.

  "You always fight it." Its head lolled to the side, too far, too wrong. "But the throne remembers. And it waits."

  The Exiled One struck, his sword cleaving through the creature's chest. For a heartbeat, the echo wavered—then dissolved, its body unraveling into smoke that stank of burnt hair and rotting petals.

  Silence.

  Then—

  A whisper, fading: "Find me, Aeris."

  Sorin collapsed to his knees.

  Liraeth reached for him, but the Exiled One caught her wrist. His grip was iron. "We can't stay here." His gaze darted to the trees, where the shadows now twitched, as if something stirred beneath their surface. "More will come. And next time—"

  He didn't need to finish.

  Liraeth looked down at Sorin, at the way his hands still shook. At the faint, glowing lines of his scars—brighter now, as if something beneath his skin strained to break free.

  The staff hummed in her grip, its light pulsing in time with the frantic beat of her heart.

  She is waking.

  And the world, it seemed, was waking with her.