The woods beyond Ashfall were not silent.
The wind moaned low, carrying the scent of rot and old fire. Trees twisted in ways they shouldn't, bent by forces Maelis couldn't see but felt. With every step away from the Watcher's spire, the tether between her and the severed soul strained—and pulsed.
She didn't tell Riven yet.
He already knew.
They walked without speaking. The forest swallowed sound, and only when they reached the ridgeline did Riven finally stop.
"We need to camp."
Maelis sank to the ground, exhausted. Her body felt foreign—lighter, yes, but empty in a way that left her skin cold. Hollow. Like a song missing half its notes.
She stared into the flickering fire Riven sparked with flint and patience. "It's still out there."
He didn't look up. "I know."
"It's dreaming through me."
Now he did look at her. "What did you see?"
Maelis
Maelis stood frozen as the broken Harvesters knelt in a wide circle around her, whispering with mouths that no longer knew language. Their eyes, white and soulless, shimmered faintly in the firelight.
"They see me," she whispered. "But they don't recognize me as myself."
Riven didn't lower his sword. "That's not reverence. It's obedience."
One of the Harvesters crawled forward on cracked hands, forehead pressed to the earth at her feet. It let out a low, guttural moan that almost sounded like a word:
"Return…"
Maelis stumbled back. "No. No, I'm not what you're looking for."
But the other Harvesters echoed the word like a chant:
"Return. Return. Return."
The shadows trembled.
Riven moved fast. "We need to move—now."
He grabbed her arm and dragged her through the thinning forest, his blade flashing as stragglers lunged in confusion or desperation. One caught Maelis's sleeve—she spun and instinctively lashed out with a pulse of energy.
Voidlight erupted from her palm.
It struck the Harvester and unmade it—turning it to ash without fire.
She stared at her hand, stunned. "That wasn't a spell."
"No," Riven said, breath sharp. "That was the Abyss."
They didn't stop until the trees thinned and moonlight poured across an open ridge. Wind rushed through the dead grass like a sigh of warning. Behind them, the Harvester swarm had vanished—faded into the forest like ghosts dispersing with the dawn.
Maelis collapsed to her knees, hands trembling.
"What's happening to me?" she asked, voice hoarse.
Riven sheathed his blade and knelt beside her. "You're linked. Even separated, the soul half knows you. It's feeding power through the gap."
"But I didn't let it."
"You don't need to," he said. "It's not asking permission anymore."
She turned to him, eyes glassy. "What if I'm not strong enough to resist it?"
"You will be," he said. "Because I'll make sure you are."
Maelis looked at him. For the first time since the ritual, her voice cracked.
"And if I'm not?"
Riven didn't answer.
Because they both knew the truth:
If she failed… he would be the one to end her.
But as the wind howled through the highlands, something else moved beneath the soil.
Far beneath.
In a chamber of black stone, lit by the heartbeat of something ancient, the other Maelis stood in the center—no longer just a memory.
She looked up. Eyes still pitch black. Smile wider now.
The mouths in the ash whispered around her.
"Soon."
The fire crackled low beneath the rocky overhang where they made camp. The wind outside whispered like it carried secrets too old for words.
Maelis sat cross-legged, staring at her open palms.
"They knelt to me, Riven. Not the Order. Not the Soul Harvesters. Me."
Riven sat a few feet away, sharpening his blade in slow, steady strokes. "No. They knelt to what they sensed in you. Your soul half… it's bleeding into your aura. You've changed."
She didn't look up. "What if I can't change back?"
His blade paused.
"That's the wrong question," he said.
Maelis glanced at him.
"The question is—do you want to?"
Her breath caught.
He sheathed his blade and stood. "Rest. We move again at first light."
But Maelis couldn't sleep.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw herself—no, it—standing in the ash-field again. Closer. Stronger. It didn't speak anymore. It just watched.
And worse, part of her wanted to step toward it.
Just one step.
One heartbeat.
Sometime before dawn, she rose and wandered from camp. The sky was bruised with stars, the moon split behind high clouds.
She knelt by a stream and stared into the rippling water.
Her reflection stared back—until it didn't.
In the reflection, her eyes were pitch black.
And the other Maelis smiled.
"You'll come to understand soon enough," the reflection said. "You severed me… but I was the part of you that survived."
Maelis stumbled back. The voice wasn't in her ears—it was in her mind, like a second thought layered beneath her own.
"You can't survive in this world as a half-being," the voice whispered. "You need me. You are me."
She clenched her fists. "You're nothing but a wound."
"No," the reflection said.
"I'm the cure."
The image vanished
When Maelis returned to camp, Riven was awake, staring into the distance.
"They're coming," he said.
She followed his gaze.
On the far horizon, firelight glimmered in a thin line—torches winding through the hills.
The Order.
Maelis's heart pounded. "How did they find us so fast?"
"They didn't," Riven said grimly. "They're following it. The soul fragment. It's pulsing now, and every Seer in the Order probably feels it like a flare in the dark."
Maelis stepped closer to him. "What do we do?"
He looked at her with eyes full of war.
"We move faster than fate. And we find the soul fragment before they do."
Maelis nodded.
And for the first time, as th
e brand on her chest pulsed with cold fire, she didn't feel fear.
She felt ready.
By midday, the sky had turned gray. No clouds—just a dull sheet, like the heavens themselves were holding their breath.
Riven and Maelis moved swiftly through the stone-wound valleys north of Ashfall. The wind carried no birdsong, no signs of life. Only the echo of footsteps that weren't theirs.
"They're close," Riven muttered. "I count four… maybe five."
"Scouts?" Maelis asked.
"Hunters. Sent ahead of the Seers."
She tightened her grip on her blade. "We can't lead them to the fragment."
"No," Riven agreed. "We don't."
He stopped. Looked toward the ridge. "We ambush them."
They waited in the cleft of an ancient gully, the earth veined with old bone and forgotten roots. The Order's scouts crept silently—cloaked in gray and branded in silver, their eyes glowing faintly with soul-sight.
Riven struck first. A blur of steel and silence.
One down.
Maelis stepped out from behind the stones and raised her hand. She didn't call upon her power—it answered anyway.
A spiral of dark light cracked through the nearest scout's armor and tore the soul from his body.
His scream died before it reached the air.
The others hesitated.
Too long.
They were already dead.
When it was done, Maelis stood in the clearing, breathing hard, her hands flickering with residual voidlight.
She turned to Riven.
"I didn't mean to do that."
He nodded. "But you could. And you didn't run from it."
"I didn't feel afraid," she said. "Not of them. Not even of… me."
She swallowed.
"I think part of me liked it."
Riven didn't speak for a long moment.
Then: "The power isn't the danger, Maelis. It's what you let it make you."
She met his gaze.
"Then help me shape it before it shapes me."
They buried the bodies beneath stone and silence. But Riven left one untouched—bound in a cloak of concealment, a message etched into the earth with a blade:
"We know. We are not running. We are becoming."
It wasn't just a warning.
It was a challenge.
That night, Maelis dreamed again.
But this time, she didn't stand in the field of ash.
She stood in a throne room made of bone and starlight.
And she—the severed soul—sat on the throne.
"Every step you take toward me," it purred, "is another step into truth."
Maelis approached.
"You'll have to make a choice, eventually," the other whispered. "Between who you were… and who you could become."
Maelis's voice rang cold and clear.
"Then I'll be the one to decide what that means."
The reflection grinned.
"We'll see."
Maelis jolted awake.
The firelight had dimmed to embers. Wind whispered through the cracks in the ruined stone walls around their camp. Riven stood at the edge of the clearing, his back to her, silent.
She sat up slowly, heart still echoing with the dream's final words.
"We'll see."
It hadn't just been a dream. It was a message. A warning. Or perhaps… a challenge.
Riven turned, sensing her stir. "You saw her again."
Maelis nodded. "She spoke more this time."
Riven's expression tightened. "The soul fragment is growing stronger. We need to move faster—before it takes over."
"I don't think she wants control," Maelis said quietly. "She wants me to choose."
"To become her?" he asked.
"To become something new," she replied, her gaze distant. "She's part of me… but she's not the only part."
Riven didn't respond right away. Then he knelt, drew a symbol in the dirt with his blade—an ancient glyph from the Order, meant to ward off soul corruption. It flickered weakly, barely glowing.
"Your soul is changing," he said. "And the Abyss knows."
As if summoned by the word, the air grew colder.
Then—three low, rhythmic beats echoed through the forest. Not drumbeats. Heartbeats. Heavy. Wrong.
Maelis grabbed her blade. Riven was already in motion.
From the darkness beyond the treeline, something stepped forth.
Not Order scouts.
Not beasts.
It was cloaked in the scent of voidfire and ash. Eyes like burning coals.
A Revenant.
A soul twisted by failed Harvest. Created when a Harvester loses control—and becomes the consumed.
"Back," Riven said, voice tight.
Maelis stood her ground. "No. Let me face it."
"Maelis—"
"I need to know what I can do."
Her soul flickered within her—unstable, uncertain.
But when the Revenant roared, her hands lit with starlight.
And she did not flinch.