Jett's POV
By sunrise, everyone in Oakhaven knew something was wrong.
Nobody talked about it.
That was how things worked here.
If a wolf dragged a child from the edge of the village, people talked about wolves.
If someone disappeared in the Greywood, they talked about bad luck.
If strange lights appeared between the trees, they talked about old stories.
And if something happened that nobody could explain, they simply stopped talking.
I had learned that silence could be louder than screaming.
I stood outside Garran's workshop and watched smoke crawl over the rooftops.
The fire had been contained before it reached the houses, but the western side of the village looked like a battlefield. One cottage had lost half its roof. The wooden gate was broken. Black footprints stained the road where people had run through the mud.
And three villagers were missing.
Nobody said their names.
Not yet.
I still had Garran's blood on my sleeve.
I hadn't washed it off.
I wasn't sure why.
Maybe because washing it away would make everything feel real.
Maybe because some part of me still believed he would walk out of the workshop and complain that I had left my boots by the door again.
Instead, the workshop stood empty.
The door was hanging from one hinge.
Inside, everything smelled of ash, iron, and something bitter I couldn't name.
The black sword was gone.
Not lost.
Not broken.
Mine.
I didn't know why I thought that.
I only knew that when I held Veyr, something inside me had answered.
Something old.
Something that had been waiting.
I hated that thought.
So I tried not to think about it.
That lasted about thirty seconds.
"Jett."
I turned.
Old Harlan stood in the road.
He was the oldest man in Oakhaven, which meant he had earned the right to look angry at everyone younger than sixty.
His beard was white, his coat was patched in six places, and he carried a walking stick that had probably been older than most of the village.
His eyes moved from me to the ruined workshop.
"You shouldn't be standing there."
"I live there."
"You know what I mean."
I didn't answer.
Harlan looked toward the Greywood.
The forest was quiet.
Too quiet.
No birds.
No insects.
Not even the usual rustling of leaves.
"The Old Bones are showing again," he said.
I frowned.
"What?"
He looked at me.
"You really don't know?"
"Know what?"
Harlan's grip tightened around his walking stick.
"Then perhaps Garran never told you."
The name hit harder than it should have.
"Told me what?"
He glanced around before lowering his voice.
"The forest has been pushing them up."
"Them?"
"The ruins."
I stared at him.
Everyone in Oakhaven knew about the ruins.
At least, everyone knew the stories.
We called them the Old Bones.
Nobody knew who had built them.
Nobody knew how old they were.
Sometimes, after heavy rain, a stone wall would appear between the trees.
Sometimes an archway.
Sometimes a staircase leading nowhere.
Once, when I was eleven, an entire tower had risen from the ground overnight.
By morning, it was gone.
People said the forest swallowed it again.
Others said someone had taken it apart.
Nobody admitted to having gone near it.
Because people who explored the Old Bones tended not to come back.
"How many?" I asked.
Harlan looked at me strangely.
"How many what?"
"Ruins."
His face tightened.
"Three this year."
I felt cold despite the morning sun.
"And now?"
He didn't answer.
I already knew.
"The one you saw last night?"
Harlan nodded.
My stomach twisted.
"Where?"
He pointed toward the Greywood.
"North."
I looked at the trees.
That was where I had been yesterday.
Where the boar had chased me.
Where I'd heard the metallic ringing.
Clang.
Clang.
And later—
Clang.
The memory crawled through my mind.
"How long has it been there?"
"Nobody knows."
"Who found it?"
Harlan hesitated.
"Your friend Tomas."
"Tomas?"
He nodded.
Tomas was seventeen like me. He lived three houses down from the bakery and spent most of his time complaining about his parents.
He had disappeared last night.
I looked back toward the forest.
"Where is he?"
Harlan didn't speak.
I understood.
My chest tightened.
"How long?"
"Since before sunset."
Nobody had told me.
Not until now.
I started walking.
Harlan caught my arm.
"Don't."
I looked down at his hand.
Then at him.
"I need to find him."
"No, Jett."
His voice had changed.
There was fear in it.
Real fear.
"You don't understand what those places are."
"Then tell me."
"I can't."
"Why?"
"Because I don't know."
That answer stopped me.
Harlan released my arm.
He stared into the Greywood like he expected something to stare back.
"My grandfather found one when he was young," he said. "A stone doorway buried beneath the roots. He went inside with four other men."
"What happened?"
"Only one came back."
"What did he say?"
Harlan swallowed.
"He said the walls were breathing."
I almost laughed.
I didn't.
Harlan continued.
"He said there were voices in the stone. He said the deeper they went, the more they remembered things they had never lived."
My fingers curled.
I thought about the wooden floor in Garran's workshop.
The vision.
The woman.
The fire.
My name.
Jett.
Or something that sounded like it.
"Did they find anything?" I asked.
"Gold?"
He shook his head.
"Weapons?"
Another shake.
"Then what?"
Harlan looked at me.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"They went looking for treasure."
His eyes moved back toward the forest.
"They found a place that remembered them."
A cold shiver passed through me.
Before I could ask anything else, a bell rang from the center of the village.
Once.
Then again.
People froze.
The same bell that had sounded during the attack.
Nobody moved.
Nobody spoke.
Then the bell rang a third time.
Harlan whispered something under his breath.
"What?"
"The ruins shouldn't be waking this early."
"Waking?"
He looked at me.
For a moment, I thought he might tell me everything.
Instead, he said, "Stay away from the Greywood."
Then he walked away.
I watched him disappear between the houses.
I hated when people gave warnings instead of answers.
Especially when they knew I wouldn't listen.
By noon, I was standing at the edge of the forest.
The Greywood looked different in daylight.
Not safer.
Just easier to lie to yourself about.
I carried my hunting knife.
I didn't bring Veyr.
Garran's sword was too dangerous.
Or maybe I was too afraid of what it would do to me.
Either way, I left it hidden beneath the floorboards of the workshop.
For now.
I stepped beneath the trees.
The air changed immediately.
Oakhaven disappeared behind me.
The forest swallowed the sounds of the village until there was nothing left but my breathing.
I followed Tomas's tracks.
At first, they were easy.
Boot prints in soft mud.
Broken branches.
A footprint beside a fallen log.
Then the tracks stopped.
Not faded.
Stopped.
One moment he had been walking.
The next, nothing.
I crouched.
There was a strange mark in the mud.
A circle.
Inside it were seven lines.
I touched it.
The world disappeared.
I was somewhere else.
A city stretched beneath a golden sky.
Buildings of white stone rose higher than anything I had ever seen.
Bridges floated between towers.
Blue light flowed through channels in the streets.
People walked beneath enormous glass structures filled with moving shapes.
Magic.
I knew it instantly.
Not because someone told me.
Because I remembered it.
A scream cut through the vision.
The city was burning.
The sky cracked open.
Something enormous moved behind the clouds.
Then a woman grabbed my shoulders.
She looked at me.
No.
She looked through me.
Like she was seeing someone standing behind my eyes.
"Run."
Her voice shook.
"They found the door."
The vision shattered.
I fell backward.
My hands dug into the dirt.
For several seconds, I couldn't breathe.
The forest was still around me.
No city.
No burning sky.
No woman.
Only trees.
I looked at the mark again.
Seven lines.
My hand trembled.
I wiped the dirt away.
The symbol remained.
Carved into stone beneath the mud.
I followed it.
Ten minutes later, I found the first wall.
It rose from the forest floor at an angle, covered in roots and moss.
Black stone.
Not grey.
Not brown.
Black.
I had seen that stone before.
In Garran's workshop.
In the box.
On the sword.
My heart started beating faster.
I moved closer.
The wall was covered in symbols.
Most were unfamiliar.
Some weren't.
One of them made sense immediately.
A circle.
Seven lines.
And beneath it—
I don't know how I understood the words.
But I did.
THE LAST MEMORY
I stepped back.
"No."
The forest answered with silence.
I touched the wall.
The world vanished again.
This time, I heard thousands of voices.
Not screaming.
Speaking.
All at once.
A language I couldn't understand.
Then one voice separated from the others.
A man's voice.
Old.
Tired.
Afraid.
"The child must never remember."
My breath caught.
Another voice answered.
"He already has."
The wall cracked.
I pulled my hand away.
A deep sound rolled through the earth.
Clang.
The same sound I'd heard yesterday.
The same sound that had answered the black sword.
The roots around the ruins began to move.
Not from the wind.
They pulled away from the stone like living fingers.
Something beneath the ground was waking.
I should have run.
Every story in Oakhaven told me to run.
Every instinct I had screamed at me to run.
Instead, I stepped closer.
A doorway emerged beneath the roots.
Stone doors.
Covered in dust.
At the center was the same symbol.
Seven lines around a circle.
I reached toward it.
Before my fingers touched the stone, a voice whispered inside my head.
Not Jett.
Not this time.
A word I had never heard.
A name I somehow understood.
Remember.
The doors opened.
And something on the other side opened its eyes.