The map is old, brittle, and possibly enchanted, which means I trust it about as much as I trust a smiling god.
Still, it points southeast, through the crooked valley of dead trees and over a bridge made of bone-white stone. Ren and I follow the path on foot, the silence between us thick with things we haven't said.
We've been walking for hours when he finally breaks it.
"So," he says, "how cursed do you think this road is, on a scale of one to screaming mirror demons?"
I glance at the narrow path ahead, where the shadows stretch too far and the wind sometimes whispers my name.
"Seven and a half," I say. "Eight if the trees start bleeding."
Ren laughs softly. "Cool. Cool. So just mildly doomed."
We fall back into silence, but it's easier now. Like the tension cracked and let something warmer slip through. The kind of warmth that makes me wonder what this would've been like, if we'd met under different stars.
By midday, the path leads us into a canyon where the rocks glow faintly with old magic. The markings on the walls feel familiar, like a dream I almost remembered.
"You recognise these?" Ren asks, running his fingers along the etched symbols.
"I think I wrote them," I murmur.
He looks at me.
"I don't know how I know that," I add quickly. "But something in me… remembers. Not the words. Just the motion. Like I carved them with my own hands."
Ren steps back and studies the wall.
"This whole place remembers you," he says. "Maybe it's not just your past that's bleeding through. Maybe the land itself hasn't forgotten."
The canyon narrows, and soon we're walking single-file, cliffs pressing in on either side. Just as the sun starts to dip, we spot something ahead; a small stone shrine, half-collapsed, with a symbol carved into its face.
The spiral with wings.
Same as the one from the first temple.
Same as the one on the pendant.
I kneel beside it. The ground here hums faintly. Not a sound, not a vibration. more like… memory.
Ren crouches beside me. "This the next piece?"
"Maybe," I whisper. "Or maybe it's a warning."
He doesn't flinch. "We keep going anyway."
"Even if it kills us?"
He smiles faintly. "It already has."
I meet his gaze. And for a moment, everything else fades; the curse, the gods, the pain of every life before this one.
It's just us. Alive. Together. Still moving forward.
The wind shifts.
Something calls to us from beyond the shrine, deep in the valley, where the stars are starting to burn brighter than they should.
The road isn't done with us yet.
And neither is our story.