Twelve

Author: Nessah

2025-08-25 01:39:12

The image burned behind Dren’s eyes long after the mimic’s ash dispersed. Myra’s face soft, terrified, too real to dismiss. He told himself it was a trick. A borrowed mask dredged from memory. But memory had weight. And what he saw had been heavier than illusion.

Veyna sheathed her blade with a sharp motion. “It knew your name.”

Dren’s fingers tightened around his sword hilt, knuckles bone-white. He hadn’t realized until she said it the mimic hadn’t only worn Myra’s face. It had spoken with a knowledge no echo should have. Not you again.

“That wasn’t random,” Veyna pressed. Her voice stayed measured, but her eyes searched him, demanding an answer. “What did it mean ‘again’?”

Dren’s throat worked, but no words came. The truth tangled too deeply. His lives blurred; the Archive made sure of it. He had seen Veyna die in other timelines, had buried her, betrayed her, saved her. Myra, too. Names and faces replayed in his mind like broken glass. But this mimic had spoken as if it remembered

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Twenty
The Ashborn’s fire was meager barely more than glowing coals smothered beneath ash to keep the light from carrying. They sat in a ring around it, their faces half-hidden, shadows deepening the ruin of their scars. No one spoke unless it was in the low murmur of warning or direction.Veyna sat near Dren, knees drawn, sword across her lap. She hadn’t unclenched her grip since the march. Her eyes kept flicking to the burned man across the circle, the way his gaze lingered too long on Dren.The Archive’s whisper hadn’t stopped since they left the hollow. It prowled at the edge of his thoughts, never loud enough for the Ashborn to notice, never quiet enough for him to forget.They watch you because they see what you are becoming. Not man. Not soldier. You are us. You are already theirs.Dren pressed his thumb hard against the scar on his palm until he felt bone. He needed pain real pain, something to cut through the voice.“You bleed shadows even in silence,” the burned man said suddenly.
Nineteen
The fire sank low, embers glowing faint red as the storm howled beyond the hollow. The Ashborn settled into their uneasy rhythms some stripping weapons for repair, others gnawing at dried meat. A few drifted to sleep against stone walls, but most kept one eye half-open, never fully surrendering.Dren stayed still, heat prickling the back of his neck under their constant stares. Veyna leaned close, voice low enough only for him.“They don’t want us here.”“They don’t want anyone here,” he murmured back.One of the younger Ashborn, a man with a shaved head and pale scars crossing his jaw, spoke suddenly. “If he’s Archive-marked, why let him sit among us? Why not end it now?”The scarred woman silenced him with a look. “Because we’re not fools. If the Archive wants him north, he’ll go north whether he walks or whether we scatter his bones. Better he carries it away from us.”Murmurs rippled through the group. A child whimpered softly before being hushed.The burned man still watching Dre
Eighteen
The ridge wind carried ash like snow, drifting over their cloaks and armor until they seemed carved from the same gray stone as the cliffs themselves. Morning had come without light. The storm-choked sky dulled every edge of the horizon, and the valley below still writhed faintly, as if last night’s battle had stirred something too deep to settle.Dren adjusted the strap across his chest, the weight of his sword biting into his shoulder. He hadn’t slept. Neither had Veyna, not truly, though she pretended better. She moved ahead of him, steady, eyes scanning the barren expanse, but he caught the stiffness in her shoulders, the way her hand kept brushing her hilt as if to remind herself it was still there.The silence between them wasn’t hostile, not anymore. But it was brittle. Every word they hadn’t said last night hung between them like smoke.They followed the ridge north. The ground sloped in long waves of black stone and frost-bitten ash, the kind of landscape where nothing should
Seventeen
The nest was gone, but the ash lingered.It clung to their clothes, their hair, their mouths. No matter how many times Dren spat into the earth, the taste of it stayed, bitter and metallic. The hollow where the nest had writhed was now just a crater of cooling stone, faintly smoking. Veins of black ichor hardened into brittle glass across the ground. The air hung heavy, too quiet, as if the world itself was holding its breath.Veyna broke the silence first. She tore a strip from her cloak and wiped her blade clean, her motions sharp and controlled. “It’s done,” she said.Dren didn’t answer. He stood with his sword still driven into the earth, his knuckles white on the hilt.Her gaze flicked to him. “Dren.”He blinked and finally pulled the blade free. The metal sang faintly, as if reluctant to leave the wound it had made. He sheathed it, though his hands shook.“Say it,” Veyna pressed, stepping closer. Her voice wasn’t unkind, but it carried the edge of command. “We destroyed it.”“We
Sixteen
The air itself seemed to rot as the nest revealed its core.Shadows peeled back like flesh from bone, revealing a cavernous hollow beneath the ruins. The stone walls pulsed faintly, threaded with veins of living black. The ceiling was a cage of twisted beams and roots, dripping with the residue of mimic-births. Every inch of it whispered, thousands of overlapping voices, each a fragment stolen from the Archive’s prey. Some were incoherent. Others clear.And too many of them were Dren’s.He froze on the threshold. The whispers crawled under his skin like parasites, finding old wounds and prying them open. He could hear himself begging for mercy. Laughing like a butcher. Screaming as steel tore through him. Whispering to Myra in the dark, words he should not still remember.Veyna’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “It’s feeding on us,” she said low. Her eyes scanned the chamber, hard as flint, but her jaw clenched. She heard it too. Her own voice tangled in the swarm. “We end it here.”D
Fifteen
The Watcher’s corpse sagged in on itself, collapsing into a ruin of smoking sinew and withered limbs. Its last cry lingered in the air like a poisoned hymn, too long, too loud, until the sound warped and folded back into silence.The silence was worse.Dren stood in the ruin’s courtyard, sword still locked in both hands, the blade dripping black fire. His chest heaved. Every nerve screamed, not only from the gash across his ribs but from what he’d pulled through himself to end it. The Archive wasn’t gone. It curled there, in his marrow, purring.More, it whispered, smooth and eager. More blood. More ruin. We are stronger together. You know it.Dren tightened his grip on the sword until his knuckles whitened. His body wanted to obey. His veins burned with that sick, honeyed power.A hand gripped his arm.“Dren.”Veyna. Her voice cut the whisper clean for a heartbeat. She was at his side, sharp-eyed and steady despite the smear of ash across her cheek. Her blade was sheathed now, her ot

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