The wind from the heights still sang among the rocks when Nyra and Arien reached the stone circle at the summit of the labyrinth. The climb had left their bodies exhausted and their hearts racing, but there, at the top, it was the mind that found itself in danger. The blue and golden light from the crystals mixed with the brightness of the sky, coloring their skin with a spectral glow, as if they were already memory and not flesh.
The circle was demarcated by twelve monoliths covered in runes so ancient that even the roots had entwined with the inscriptions. Between them floated a thin mist that sometimes looked like stone vapor, sometimes a veil of longing. The ground was cold, polished by centuries of feet and pacts, and wherever Arien stepped, he felt small shivers, as if each stone held traces of the decisions made by those who had already stood there.
Nyra touched his shoulder, her eyes full of respect and fear.
— "This is the threshold, Arien. The Whisperers don't give easy answers. Here, every pact is an echo, and every memory is a price."
Before Arien could reply, the mist stirred and four hooded figures appeared at opposite points in the circle. Their cloaks seemed made of the very wind, always in motion, translucent in the light, and each of them held a staff carved with fragments of mirror. No face was visible—only shadows and blue glints where their eyes should have been.
One Whisperer spoke first, the voice manifold, echoing in the stones and within Arien's chest:
— "Here, son of fire and forgetting, you may ask time to show you the root of your blood. You may understand what you are—and why you bear the burden of the flame."
Another oracle tilted the staff, making lights and memories dance across the polished surfaces:
— "But knowing has its price. The circle has already stolen the reason of kings, druids, and assassins. Many have sought the truth; few have endured it."
Arien felt the blade vibrate, a heat pulsing under his skin, rising through his arm as if his veins were traced with burning iron. The ancient fragment resonated, and for a moment the world around seemed to disappear: there was only the circle, the wind, and that primordial force. In the distorted reflection of the oracular staffs, he saw his own face multiplied dozens of times, each image superimposed over the other like pages of a book never finished. He was the boy—dirty with dust, wide-eyed with curiosity and fear; he was also the marked man, the look harder, the face shadowed by losses and impossible decisions. Behind those faces, other layers appeared: the survivor stained with blood and silence, the guilty man haunted by his own mistakes, the symbol of an ancestral legacy he struggled to accept, the shadow of all the choices left unmade. The images mingled in waves, the outlines of each Arien dissolving and blending until there were no clear boundaries between present and past, between dream and truth.
He then felt not only his own memories but also others invading his mind—recollections of voices speaking forgotten tongues, fragments of stories told by the fireside, pacts sealed beneath ancient moons. It was as if his entire family lineage were stacking up behind his eyes, each ancestor laying an invisible hand on his shoulder, charging, advising, murmuring laments and warnings. The feeling was of being many and one, of carrying the heritage of all who came before and, at the same time, feeling the crushing weight of being the last link in a chain that should never have been forged. For an instant, Arien feared losing himself in that multitude—to dissolve in the torrent of lives and destinies that had preceded him. But the heat of the blade in his hand, the physical anchor of what he was, kept him standing, even if trembling, on the threshold between understanding and forgetting.
Nyra whispered, firm but anxious:
— "If it's too much, if you can't bear it, I'll bring you back. But no one leaves the circle as they entered."
The third Whisperer spun the staff, making shadows spread on the ground in spiraled patterns:
— "To understand your own blood is to walk between what you chose to forget and what you never had the courage to admit. Behind every secret, there's a madness waiting for a name."
Arien closed his eyes, letting the world around dissolve into layers of wind and murmurs. For a moment, all that remained was the rhythm of the thin air, the ethereal voices of the Whisperers echoing like old memories, and Nyra's ragged breathing at his side. He knelt at the center of the circle, and the cold of the stones pierced his body, making space and time begin to lose meaning. Vertigo took him: it was as if he were floating over an invisible abyss, everywhere and everywhen at once—childhood and old age mixed, hope and loss overlaid, future and past shuffled in a tapestry of sensations.
Amid this maelstrom, he felt the heat of his mother's hand squeezing his, so real he nearly wept with longing. He heard the voice of Khron, the hermit, deep and definitive, saying: "It's not the heat that kills, Arien. It's the emptiness it leaves behind." Each word echoed like a sentence. Then, the vertigo threw him into visions he'd never witnessed: he saw a man like himself—older, eyes burning blue—devastating villages with the Static Flame; he saw a woman with eyes identical to his, entwined in living roots, sealing pacts with entities that crawled between earth and time. The feeling was of being both spectator and protagonist of a drama that spanned centuries, carrying not only his own destiny but that of all those who had touched the flame and the promise before him.
A laugh sounded, and the voice of the last Whisperer cracked like dry twigs:
— "To know who you are, Arien, is to understand that you were never alone. And that every burden is both inheritance and choice."
Within himself, Arien felt two paths. One was clear, warm, and limited: close his eyes, refuse the offer, keep his sanity intact—and forever carry the doubt. The other was an abyss of possibilities, made of blue flames, blood, roots, and delirium: to look deep into his lineage, to accept that the pain of truth is also the pain of transformation.
He opened his eyes slowly, as if he still needed to break the skin of a dream, and stared at the mist swirling around him, seeing himself multiplied in the shadows and in the nearly ethereal forms of the oracles. The wind at the height of the circle grew stronger, hissing between the monoliths and lifting golden dust like a living dance, while the runes carved in the stones pulsed with golden and blue light—sometimes casting flashes that cut the mist, sometimes shimmering like stars caught in the earth. For an instant, everything seemed about to dissolve, and Arien felt his own identity waver, threatened with being lost in the currents of memories and possibilities.
It was then that Nyra, perceiving the danger, reached for his hand. The simple touch of her fingers brought him back the warmth of the present—a solid anchor amid the storm of memories. The heat of their intertwined hands kept Arien from losing himself completely in the whirlpools of memory, fixing his consciousness in the now, reminding him that he still existed, despite the weight of the visions and the call of ancestral voices. With a hoarse voice, as if fighting not to dissolve, Arien said:
— "I want to know. Even if I lose something of myself. Even if I never become whole again. I need to understand."
At that moment, the Whisperers looked at each other—if indeed they could see one another beneath their hoods—and raised their staffs. Lights danced through the circle, each stone casting fragments of past and future into the air: voices of ancestors, scenes of pacts, battles, smiles, and screams. Arien's mind was flooded with memories he didn't know were his: cities vanishing in mist, promises made before altars, the birth of a curse, the choice to become guardian of a flame that never should have existed.
The world spun and shook. The wind screamed. For a moment, Arien felt he was going mad—that everything solid in him was crumbling, turning to memory and pain.
Nyra called him, her voice getting lost in the hurricane:
— "Come back, Arien! Don't forget who you are!"
In the center of the circle, Arien fell to his knees. Tears of pain and wonder streamed down his face. Sanity wavered, but at the core of it all was a seed of clarity. The final vision that struck him was a pair of eyes—identical to his—shining in the darkness, as if another Arien, in another time, had made the same choice.
The wind ceased. The lights faded. The Whisperers dispersed like mist in sunlight, leaving behind only the softly glowing runes and the mute presence of the circle itself. Arien was breathless, pale, but alive. He knew more about himself—but he felt that something had been left behind, a fragment of innocence or reason left as payment.
Nyra embraced him, pulling him back to the present, her hands cold, her eyes wet with fear and relief. For a moment, she remained motionless, feeling her heart pounding against Arien's chest, as if both needed to be sure they were really there, together and whole. Her eyes searched his, restless, seeking traces of the Arien she had known before the circle—and also, perhaps, fearing to find someone unrecognizable.
— "You did it. And you're still here. But you're not the same anymore," Nyra said quietly, her voice thick with a mixture of respect, tenderness, and apprehension. She placed a hand on his face, gently tracing the line of a tear with her thumb. Her fingers trembled, not just from emotion but because she could feel, almost like a magical echo, the intensity of the memories they had traversed together. For a moment, Nyra also closed her eyes, as if sharing part of that burden—and when she opened them, her eyes were shining, wet, almost pleading.
She whispered, more to herself than to him:
— "I was afraid of losing you. And even though you're still Arien before me, I know you carry a piece of everyone who entered and left this circle before us." Her touch lingered on his hand, anchoring him in reality, offering a silent security, the kind of support only someone who also knows the fear of forgetting can give.
The circle was silent. The sky above was no longer just the ceiling for trials: it, too, seemed to wait for the next choice. The wind brought a light wave of golden dust that danced around them, as if the place itself granted a brief blessing or farewell.
Through tears, Arien whispered:
— "Now I know. I know where I came from, what I carry, and why everything was taken from me. I know what awaits me if I turn back… and that there is only one path: forward. All that's left is to keep going."
Nyra, not letting go of his hand, nodded gravely. The respect in her gaze was absolute, but there was also a trace of pain and compassion.
— "I'll go with you. Even if everything changes, I won't leave you alone on the path. Someone needs to remember who you were—and who you can still be."
And thus, they remain side by side, feeling that the circle had changed not only Arien, but also the bond between them. Nyra's promise, silent and firm, was also a vow against forgetting—and a bridge to everything they still had to face.