The Cradle of Ash
The journey to the Cradle of Ash took them through lands scorched by forgotten fire. The soil was blackened, the sky a permanent twilight hue, and the wind carried the scent of something ancient and undone.
The silver trail left by Mira's sigil wove through the desolation, guiding them around sinkholes of flame and through forests reduced to skeletal remains. Yet beneath the ash, green life stirred, waiting.
"The Between is bleeding through here," Lena murmured. "It's like this place is waking from a long sleep."
They camped on the edge of a valley where the Cradle rose in a ring of volcanic peaks. From a distance, it looked like a crown set upon the earth—jagged, black, and smoldering. Within the ring, a hollow plain shimmered like glass. At its center: a tree of ash and bone, reaching toward the heavens.
"That's not the Tree," Elric said.
"No," Bram answered. "But it remembers the Tree."
When they crossed into the valley, time grew unstable. Daylight flashed to night and back again. Whispers curled around their ears—echoes of thoughts not their own.
At the base of the ash tree, they found a pool of still water. Mira's mark glowed beneath its surface. And beside it, a figure waited.
Not Mira.
A Keeper.
But not like any they had seen before. She wore robes of living stars, and her eyes held galaxies. Her voice echoed before she spoke.
"You follow one who dares what others feared."
"Where is she?" Lena asked.
"She walks the Dreaming Path. She sees what none before her have dared to look upon."
"Can we reach her?" Bram asked.
The Keeper knelt by the pool and placed a star-shaped crystal into its depths. The surface rippled, showing Mira walking a bridge of light through shifting skies, surrounded by forgotten beings—part spirit, part idea.
"She seeks the Source," the Keeper said. "But it is not a place. It is a choice. One that reshapes all who find it."
"Then we'll follow," Elric said.
The Keeper looked at them, not with judgment, but deep sadness.
"If you step into the Cradle, you will not return unchanged. Each of you will lose something you hold dear."
They looked to each other.
Lena: "We came this far together." Elric: "We don't stop now." Bram: "She chose. So will we."
They stepped into the pool.
The world around them shattered—and reformed.
They were no longer in the Cradle. They were falling upward into a sea of stars, into the Dreaming Path Mira now walked.
And ahead of them, she turned—and smiled.