The western road wound through husks of farms and half-burned signposts.
The soil still smelled faintly of iron and wet ash.
Bram walked ahead, spear slung across his back, humming off-key.
Bram: “Do ghosts pay taxes out here?”
Kael: “Only if they own property.”
Bram: “So—smarter than me.”
Nora rode behind them, eyes on her instruments.
Nora: “Fog density’s rising every hour. If it thickens before sunset, we turn back.”
Kael: “The client won’t pay if we turn back.”
Nora: “Neither will they pay if we’re dead.”
Kael: “Then I’ll invoice our corpses.”
Lio chuckled quietly, trying not to.
The sound drifted like warmth in the cold gray air.
They made camp beside a cracked bridge where the river crooned under stone.
Bram gathered wood. Nora mixed reagents. Lio adjusted small traps that chimed in the wind like glass birds.
Kael struck flint. A spark leapt, bit his palm, and flared out. He didn’t flinch—just brushed the ember away. His skin showed no mark.
Bram squinted.
Bram: “You got dragon skin, boss?”
Kael: “Just calloused.”
Bram: “Callouses don’t heal mid-sentence.”
Kael: “You talk too much mid-sentence.”
Nora: smirking “Both statements are accurate.”
Laughter came, easy and brief.
Still, Lio’s gaze lingered on Kael’s hand too long for comfort.
A storm rolled from the west—lightning blue, thunder silent.
They found shelter beneath a ruined shrine whose walls glowed with buried script.
Nora traced the symbols.
Nora: “Residual mana. Someone tried to seal it and failed.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Bram: “Meaning?”
Kael: “Meaning.”
The lightning struck again—and their reflections warped in the stone.
Five figures became six.
A shadow stepped out of Kael’s reflection, its body woven from letters that unspooled like ribbons of smoke.
Bram: “That’s new.”
Nora drew a vial. Lio reached for knives.
Kael only sighed.
Kael: “Backwards verses again.”
He wrote a counter-glyph—swift, inevitable.
The shadow folded in on itself, melting into ink that vanished between the cracks.
Bram: “You gonna explain that?”
Kael: “Static. Happens when words echo wrong.”
Nora: “Most people’s static doesn’t grow limbs.”
Kael: “I’m not most people.”
He smiled, but his eyes didn’t.
Later, drying beside the fire, the night grew comfortable and strange.
Nora watched the flames dance.
Nora: “Who taught you versecraft? Nobody practices it anymore.”
Kael: “Someone who ran out of things to say.”
Nora: “Alive?”
Kael: “Not when I finished learning.”
Bram yawned, stretching.
Bram: “If I die, don’t quote poetry over my corpse. I’ll get up and hit you.”
Kael: “Promise noted.”
Lio watched the firelight flicker in Kael’s eyes.
Lio: “You talk like you’ve been everywhere.”
Kael: “Then why am I still lost?”
The flames crackled as if laughing quietly for him.
They broke camp before sunrise.
The fog ahead shimmered gold shot with red—the first breath of Aurelshade.
Nora: “That color isn’t natural.”
Kael: “No. It’s alive.”
The wind carried singing—faint, far, and hauntingly familiar.
The same melody Kael had once played in Dragonia.
Wonder.
He stopped walking, only for a heartbeat.
Bram: “What’s wrong?”
Kael: “Nothing.”
Bram: “Then why do you look like you heard a ghost?”
Kael: “Maybe I wrote one.”
The song grew louder as they descended the ridge.
Below them, the horizon burned gold—
and Aurelshade waited, singing his name.
The rain ended before sunrise.
The fire smoldered to ash, and the road waited—same dust, new ghosts.
No one spoke of the ink creature, or how Kael’s reflection had bled words.
They only packed in silence, pretending the world was normal.
Bram hummed. Nora rolled her eyes but didn’t stop him.
Lio lingered, tracing a bootprint already fading in the mud.
Kael watched the horizon burn faint gold.
The dead are singing, he thought. And they’ve learned my tune.
He turned his collar against the wind.
The crew followed, laughing just enough to sound alive.
Somewhere west, Aurelshade’s first bells began to ring—
the kind of sound that makes even immortals remember they still can die.
