The mist curled around her ankles, then her knees, then her throat. It was cold, but not the cold of winter. The cold of absence —as if the mist was not water, but the space where memories had been ripped out.
She remembered a war fought with songs. A city built inside a single teardrop. A king who traded his shadow for a second chance. And she remembered his name—not Ese Per Dimrin, but what came before. Ese Per Dimrin
The children of Thornwood still tell the story. But they no longer whisper the name. The mist curled around her ankles, then her
Kaela was twelve the first time she heard it. She remembered a war fought with songs
"I am the keeper of forgotten things," she whispered to the moon that night. "And he is the hunger that forgetting leaves behind."