I remember the fire first.

  Not the scent, nor the sound, but the color — a sickly violet hue that painted the roots like bruises beneath the earth. Our flame was never meant to burn that way. It was sacred, steady. But this... this was rage turned inward. Sacred things, when defiled, scream.

  The Nestvaults burned from the inside out.

  I was in the Hall of Ink, binding the name of a young midwife when the alarms began to hum — not ring, not blare — hum. Even our danger came gently.

  I remember Elder Cierne’s expression when she entered. Not fear. Not surprise. Just a resigned softness. Like someone who had rehearsed this ending in her heart, again and again, until the final cue.

  “They’ve come,” she said. “The Empire fears silence. Fears that we might speak a truth they could not erase.”

  Others gathered as she spoke. Brother Virel, who stitched soul-chants into reeds. Sister Maréthe, keeper of the Vault of Bells. Young Voix-in-training like myself — frightened, feather-bound children clutching tomes that glowed too brightly in the dark.

  “We are not meant to fight,” Cierne continued. “But we are meant to witness.”

  The words landed like stones in my chest.

  That was when the vision struck — not from the present, but from deep within my bones. A memory rising unbidden:

  I was six again, standing in a circle of blackened soil. My hands were bloody. Not from battle, but from digging.

  Ash still rained over the ruins of our hamlet.

  I had no name.

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  No family.

  Only the half-melted trinket clutched in my fist and a voice — old, gentle, cloaked in beard and riddles — who found me wandering along the fringe of the Shroud.

  "A child who remembers the dead has already walked halfway to the Morrinar," the old hermit said. He gave me food. Then silence. Then a name:

  Moissonneuse.

  The Harvester.

  It was not meant as burden.

  But as promise.

  The vision faded as the Hall shook. Reality reclaimed me in the form of screams. Someone had opened the Vault of Shallow Graves. The heat inside melted the memory-threads into black ribbon. Maréthe cried out. I never saw her again.

  We were not soldiers.

  But still, some tried to hold the invaders back. Virel held the Door of Offering with only his chants and a reed flute until the flames silenced him. Acolytes collapsed under wards meant to shatter soul-binding glyphs. Every relic we could not carry was consumed.

  I ran.

  Not out of fear.

  Out of obligation.

  I had the Grimoire du Silence tucked beneath my cloak — the oldest tome we possessed. Not a book of spells. A book of names. Of whispers. Of things even we were not allowed to speak except under moonlight.

  I made it to the barrow-steps when the sky cracked open.

  I remember looking up and seeing not stars, but smoke. Not birds, but embers with wings.

  Serre-du-Vide found me that night.

  It was not given — it was left. In the roots of the oldest yew tree in the clearing, where the soil knew all our songs. A relic scythe, cloaked in frost and feathers. As I reached for it, the Reaper's voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere:

  "The Hollow breaks. The crow must carry what the world forgets."

  My hands trembled.

  I did not feel ready.

  But I took the scythe anyway.

  And when I turned back, Elder Cierne was gone. Not slain. Not taken.

  Gone — as if she had stepped out of memory itself.

  I fled into the ash and dark. The vaults crumbled behind me. Feathers turned to soot. Names burned. And yet, some part of me knew:

  Not all was lost.

  Because I still remembered.

  And no one dies twice.