Stormbreak Vale welcomed them not with cheers—but with silence.
When Althar and his companions descended from the Hollowed Peaks, they expected celebration. Word of their victory against the Seeker should've spread like wildfire. The Sanctum's protection should have brought hope.
Instead, the town felt… wrong.
Streets were empty. Torches burned low. Flags hung limp and colorless. And the people they passed—those few who remained—averted their gazes as if they didn't recognize their saviors at all.
"I don't like this," Seris whispered, hand resting on the hilt of her blade. "They look… dazed."
Ariya narrowed her eyes at a merchant's stall. "Where's Old Rannor? He always shouted about his overripe apples."
Kaelis glanced at Althar. "They've been touched. Not erased—but... tampered with."
Althar stopped in the center of the square and turned slowly in a circle.
The banners that had once flown the Flameborn sigil now hung blank.
Not torn.
Empty.
Like someone had scrubbed away the meaning.
"Someone's been here," he said grimly.
Kaelis nodded. "I know who."
That night, they met in the war room beneath the Vale's great hall.
Of the commanders they had left behind, only a few remained—and even fewer remembered them.
Althar questioned each one. Some struggled to recall their oaths. Others asked questions that chilled him.
"Who is Kaelis again?"
"Flameborn? I thought that was just a myth."
Even Braeg—already lost to the Seeker—was now a ghost of a ghost.
And that's when Kaelis finally said the name aloud:
"The Order of the Hollow Veil."
Seris blinked. "That's not real. That's bedtime horror."
"It's real," Kaelis said grimly. "I saw them only once. The Empress doesn't kill you. She makes you… unreal. Her assassins steal faces. Identities. They become the forgotten—and then erase others in turn."
Ariya scowled. "You mean they're in the Vale?"
"They're already here," Kaelis said. "They've been wearing our allies. Walking our halls."
Althar rose. "Then we find them."
The first clue came from a child.
A girl named Mira, hiding in the rafters of the western storehouse. When Seris found her, she refused to come down at first—but finally whispered:
"The black-eyed ones took Captain Harl. Then they came back looking like him. But they don't talk the same."
Seris brought her to Althar.
"They smell like salt and stone," Mira said quietly. "Like they've been buried for a long time."
That was all he needed.
By midnight, Stormbreak Vale was locked down. Loyal guards were posted. Old oaths renewed. Kaelis began testing memory with small spells—binding truth to touch and voice.
And then they found one.
A steward. Quiet. Gentle. He'd served under Althar's father, long ago.
But when Kaelis pressed a binding charm to his brow, he vanished.
No struggle.
Just crumbled into ash, revealing a hollow echo where a soul should be.
An agent of the Hollow Veil.
Ariya swore. "So anyone could be one of them?"
Kaelis nodded. "They're not many. But each can unmake and replace. We must find the core—who among them leads."
Seris growled, "And when we do?"
Althar answered coldly. "We carve their names before they erase ours."
That dawn, as light broke over the mountains, Althar stood atop the watchtower and looked westward—toward the Empress's lands.
He clenched the edge of the stone with white knuckles.
He had fought a being of pure oblivion. He had learned to feel, to anchor himself in name and truth.
But this...
This was corruption from within.
They weren't facing death.
They were facing replacement.
The war had changed again.
Now, memory itself was a battlefield.
And only the remembered could survive.