Chapter 30 : piece of the past

Lara was still on the floor when the wind pushed the door wide.

Snow flurried in.

And with it—Kael.

He stood in the threshold, blinking at the wreckage. Smoke drifted behind her, curling up from the scattered remains of Mira’s work. The air still shimmered faintly with the last traces of mana suppression.

Lara, dazed and bruised, tried to sit up. Her body protested.

Kael was at her side in two steps, offering a hand like this was a tavern brawl and not the aftermath of a ritual gone wrong.

“What happened?” he asked. Then, glancing toward the hearth: “Wait, was this you?

She didn’t take his hand. She pushed herself up slowly.

“Where is Ryo?” he asked.

“Gone,” she said. “Taken. Or... he left. It’s hard to tell now.”

Kael’s expression changed.

No longer performative. The mask didn’t fall, exactly—it just... thinned.

He looked around, saw the burnt map on the desk, and moved toward it. His fingers traced the edge of the red-marked tunnel.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“The only place Nhar’zel can be killed.”

At that, Kael stilled.

“Nhar’zel.” He said it softly, like the name had weight behind his teeth. Like it tasted familiar.

Lara watched him. “You know the name?”

“I remember it,” he said. “Not clearly. But it’s... like a scar on the inside of my skull.”

Mira and him have no resemblance, maybe...

She nodded slowly, breath catching. “Mira saved you, didn’t she?”

His eyes flicked to her, startled.

“You weren’t her son”

Kael didn’t deny it. Didn’t confirm it either.

He just looked down at the map.

“I guess we’ve all been living on top of someone else’s lie.”

Then, with a crooked smile returning—soft this time, almost tired:

“Well, at least I’m not just charming. I’m plot-relevant, too.”

Lara managed the ghost of a smile. It was the best she could do.

He reached out carefully, touched the bruised side of her face, and said, “You’re hurt. Let me—”

She shook her head. “No time.”

She pulled the page from the desk and folded it tight.

“We go to the second shaft.”

Kael raised an eyebrow. “Together?”

“I don’t think I can do it alone.”

He stepped back, gave a dramatic bow, then winked.

“Then you, me, and the end of the world. Sounds like a date.”

---

Kael stood at the edge of Mira’s garden, where frost devoured the last of the summer roots.

Ash drifted from the cottage behind him. Smoke curled from the windows like ghosts reluctant to leave.

The villagers had gone. Only footprints remained—booted, bare, bloodied.

He didn’t speak.

Didn’t move.

He sometimes had flash of dreams or memories, where he walks under the snow with a boy older than him,
And he always calls him Kael, before the boy disappears.

---

The box in her cellar hadn’t been locked.

It had been buried beneath layers of woven cloth and sealing glyphs, the kind meant to confuse the eye and blur memory. But when he found it—drawn not by curiosity, but by instinct—it opened easily.

Inside: a single, crumpled blanket embroidered with the sigil of the Ridge-Keepers. Blood-stained. Child-sized.

No name.

He read it once. Then again. Then again.

---

> _"To whomever finds him—

My name is Kael. I could not save the others. The beast was already feeding. I ran with him in my arms. He does not speak. He may never.

I raised him in silence.

I do not think he needs to know."_

— Kael

---

Kael folded the letter.

Not a son.

A relic.

One saved when the others were consumed. A half-buried secret in a town that fed its fears with silence.

He remembered flashes—nothing solid. Cold rock. A humming lullaby. A voice calling from the dark.

And then Mira’s hands. Warm, bloodied, lifting him into light.

His hands clenched.

So he was one of them. The children that never made it out.

Except he did.

And now Vix and Aldah were inside that same mine. With that same beast. A thing that once hunted children by the rhythm of their songs.

Kael turned away from the garden. He gave one look to Lara before nodding.

She is really attractive when she is mad

---

The screams had stopped.

Only breathing remained.

The chamber was lit by nothing now. The crystals had dimmed, retreating from the thing that moved between them. Not walking. Not crawling. Shifting.

Vix held his ground.

The thing in the pit whispered again.

> “Mira… where is Mira…”

And then:

> “We remember you…”

It was not one voice. It was a thousand, layered and fractured, like crystal shards ground underfoot. The children weren’t gone. They were part of it. Its body. Its voice. Its soul.

“No sacrifice is enough,” Aldah muttered. “This thing was made to hunger.”

Vix stepped forward.

“Then let’s give it what it’s not expecting.”

---

Lara and Kael arrived at the first collapsed shaft before nightfall.

The ward Mira placed over the entrance had failed—partially burned, partially overwritten. Someone had used blood to force it open. Fresh blood.

They descended in silence.

With swords and torches.

They walked for hours, deeper and deeper, until the mana veins began to pulse.

And then they heard it.

The humming.

But not the twisted lullaby from before.

This was new.

Familiar.

A voice he remembered from the edge of death.

His own.

Carried through crystal. Echoing across time. Humming the same song Mira had once sung to him to calm his fever.

The beast stirred.

Kael start walking.

---