The days grew longer as I wandered deeper into the woods. Not by the sun's rhythm, but by time’s refusal to pass cleanly. Time had become sticky. Thoughts doubled back on themselves. Even my shadow walked in circles. It was as if the forest itself was folding inward, drawing me into its breathless center.

  I began to murmur the names aloud.

  Softly, at first. Then louder.

  Alenra Vey.

  Dannith Rayne.

  Elder Cierne.

  Virel. Maréthe.

  The scythe on my back pulsed at each name, like a bell with no clapper. A dull weight that reminded me of who I had buried — and who had been buried in me.

  They were not just names. They were weights. Keepsakes. Warnings. Echoes folded in syllables.

  The forest listened. That much I knew. But it did not answer.

  Until I came upon the clearing.

  Perfectly circular, the grass within untouched by wind. Leaves did not fall here. The air shimmered faintly, as if holding its breath. The stones ringing the space had been placed — not by accident, nor nature, but by ritual. An ancient kind. The kind we had once whispered about in Vaultside lore but never dared seek.

  At the center was a feather.

  Black as sleep. Wide as my palm. It glowed faintly along the quill, not with light, but memory.

  I did not trust it.

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  But I picked it up anyway.

  The moment my fingers brushed the spine, the world dropped away.

  I saw her face — not the fox-girl, not the stormlight grin — but Elder Cierne.

  Her eyes wide, not with fear, but with knowing.

  “You are not ready,” she whispered, the words like dust over snow.

  Then: silence.

  I woke in a pool of my own breath, the feather gone. My heart raced like a songbird in a cage.

  That night, I dreamt again.

  The Reaper stood at the edge of a crumbling bridge, windless cloak billowing as if moved by breath long since forgotten. It said nothing. It did not need to. Its presence was both question and answer.

  It pointed across the chasm.

  There, on the other side, stood the Morrinar.

  Every one of them.

  Faceless. Cloaked. Motionless. Waiting like gravestones arranged by grief.

  And behind them — something else.

  Someone small.

  Wrapped in red and dusklight, a crown of fox ears barely visible beneath a fluttering hood. Watching me with a sly smile.

  A fox’s grin. A challenge.

  When I reached for her, the bridge cracked beneath me.

  Not a sound. No collapse. Just the sensation of truth unraveling beneath my feet.

  I fell — not into death, but into names.

  Whispering. Weeping. Welcoming.

  They filled my ears. Crawled into my throat. Some laughed. Some cried. All remembered.

  I awoke gasping. Cold air slicing through my lungs like sharpened chant.

  Serre-du-Vide was ice-cold.

  The forest had gone quiet again. Not empty. Listening.

  But something had shifted.

  The names no longer whispered only of grief.

  Some began to hum with anticipation.

  As if they knew my journey was no longer just to remember the dead.

  But to find the one who might stop them from dying in the first place.

  And for the first time since the Hollow burned, I whispered a name I did not yet know:

  "Foxfire..."