The town of Wushan stood quiet beneath the shroud of dawn, its crooked roofs and timeworn lanterns still cloaked in mist. To most, it was just another forgotten border settlement, where the cries of the past lingered in alleyways and the wind always smelled faintly of iron. But to Elwin Sallet, it was a waypoint—perhaps the last one—on a trail grown colder with every step.
He stood at the edge of the town square, boots dusted with ash and frost, Aymelle's staff slung across his back like a memory too heavy to carry in hand. The villagers had already begun to stir, moving like shadows through the fog. No one met his eyes. Travelers were rare. Armed ones, rarer still.
A hunched woman selling herbs watched him from her stall with a gaze both wary and knowing. Her lips moved, barely above a whisper: "The howls returned last night… from the forest."
Elwin didn't respond. He simply turned and walked, the scent of decay riding the wind.
---
At the inn, the barkeep was a man with a crooked scar down his cheek and a wariness carved deep into his brow. Elwin had spoken to him the night before, trading coin for silence and information. The man had said the same name, twice, in hushed tones:
"The Source of the Crying Remains."
A cursed chasm just east of Wushan. A place older than the town itself, older than the war, perhaps even older than the gods.
They said the earth wept there.
They said people entered… and never came back.
But someone had entered recently. A girl in white robes, bloodied, staggering, half-conscious. Seen days ago, heading east with nothing but her staff and a flickering will to live.
Elwin didn't need to ask her name.
---
He rode by midday, horse hooves striking gravel and frost. The trees beyond the village loomed like silent judges, their skeletal branches scraping at the gray sky. As he passed the final marker of civilization—a rusted shrine long abandoned—he slowed.
There, nailed into the trunk of a dying pine, was a charm.
A ward, shaped like a tear, inscribed in Old Tongue.
He traced it with gloved fingers.
Aymelle had always favored these. They were used to protect the dying, to guide the spirits of those lost to grief. But this one… it wasn't for the dead.
It was a message.
I remember.
---
The path narrowed into a trail swallowed by fog and thorn. Birds no longer sang here. The only sound was the whisper of wind through bone-dry leaves. And something else—so faint it might have been imagined.
A voice. Not spoken, but felt.
"Elwin…"
He stopped, heart tightening.
But when he turned, no one stood behind him. Only the mist, curling like smoke.
He pressed on.
He did not know that just beyond the veil of mountains, in the heart of the cursed chasm, another had awakened.
And the tears she shed had begun to echo through the land.
Darkness clung to her like wet silk—heavy, suffocating, cold.
Aymelle's breath came shallow as she stirred, her limbs trembling with the weight of sleep's release. She lay on uneven stone, surrounded by silence so thick it roared. Her fingers curled instinctively, brushing against the cracked remains of her staff. The wood was splintered, one end dark with dried blood.
For a moment, she could not remember where she was. Then the pain surged, and with it, memory.
The escape.
The chase.
The fall.
And before that, Elwin's voice—calling her name as the world gave way beneath her.
She pushed herself upright. Her robes, once white, were now stained with ash and shadow, clinging to her form in tattered folds. Light was absent, but faint motes—like the drifting remnants of dreams—floated in the air. Pale blue, barely visible, they pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat.
She wasn't alone.
Not truly.
---
The Source of the Crying Remains wasn't just a place. It breathed. It mourned.
And it spoke.
"You weep for them still."
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere, neither male nor female, like water echoing through a cavern of bone.
Aymelle shivered. Her eyes narrowed, focusing on a distant glow—like tears floating in the abyss. She staggered toward it, each step labored. The stone underfoot was carved with sigils, ancient and pulsing faintly, like veins beneath dying skin.
"You carry the weight of the forgotten."
"You fear the truth of what you are."
She reached a chamber—a natural hollow in the earth, rimmed with blackened roots that twisted like veins into the walls. In its center stood a pool of still water, clear and deep as the sky she could no longer see. As she approached, the motes swirled faster, brighter, drawn to her presence.
Then the reflection came.
Not her.
Not fully.
---
In the water, her mirrored self stared back with glowing eyes and silver hair drifting like mist. Her tears were not made of water—but of light. And in them, fragments moved: faces, memories, grief.
"Elwin…" she whispered. "I left him…"
Her reflection blinked.
Then smiled.
And Aymelle gasped as power surged up her spine—raw, aching, and old. The water rippled violently, and from its depths rose creature of sorrow, born from broken memories and bound regrets.
It crawled forth on limbs of bone and shrouded flesh, eyeless, sobbing with the voice of a child.
And Aymelle understood.
The remains cried because they remembered.
Because they could not forget.
---
"I won't run," she whispered, clutching her broken staff.
The light within her flared. The motes condensed, spiraling around her like armor woven from grief.
She stepped forward, heart pounding—not with fear, but purpose.
She raised her hand, tears streaming down her face—not from pain, but from resolve.
And as the power of her sorrow answered, her voice echoed through the chasm.
"For the ones I've lost… and the one I still seek…"
Light burst forth.
The creature's scream was drowned in it.
And when silence returned, Aymelle stood alone by the pool, her tears still falling—but now, they glowed.
The sky above Wushan had darkened, veiled by clouds that neither moved nor stirred. A stillness hung over the town like a breath held too long, waiting to break.
Elwin stood at the edge of the desolate canyon—the Maw, locals called it—where the earth had split open like an old wound. Beyond it lay the entrance to the Source of the Crying Remains, cloaked in a mist that bled upwards from the abyss like smoke from dying coals.
He had followed the whispers. The scent of burned incense and blood. The tracks of footsteps too light to belong to the heavy-booted pilgrims.
Aymelle had passed this way. Of that he was certain. The trail of her sorrow had left a scar on the world. He could feel it—not with his mind, but in his soul.
He descended.
---
The path was treacherous. Crumbled stone stairs led down into an ever-deepening gloom, flanked by ancient statues of forgotten saints whose faces had eroded into weeping masks. Elwin paused at one of them, brushing away the moss at its base. Carved beneath were words in the old tongue:
"Only those who weep for the world may enter."
A chill ran through him. He thought of her—of the soft way she used to hum while tending the monastery garden. Of the way she smiled, even when sadness clung to her like shadow.
She belongs to this place now, a voice whispered in his head. She is part of its sorrow.
"No," he murmured. "She's still Aymelle. Still herself."
The fog thickened, and with it came the scent of rot and damp stone.
And then, a figure emerged.
---
It stood at the edge of the fog, wrapped in rusted plate and ceremonial cloth that fluttered despite the windless air. A helm obscured its face, but its posture—rigid, unnatural—spoke of a life long since abandoned.
In its hands was a great blade, notched and worn. Crimson runes pulsed along its edge.
The Warden of the Remnants.
Elwin drew his weapon slowly, the blade humming faintly in his grip.
"Let me pass," he said, voice low but resolute. "I seek no quarrel."
The Warden raised its head. From behind the helm came a voice like stone grinding against stone.
"None pass who carry hope."
"None pass who bear love."
"Only despair may cross."
Elwin's grip tightened.
"If despair is all that remains…" he stepped forward, "then I'll carve my path through it."
The Warden moved.
Faster than death, heavier than fate.
Their blades met in a cry of steel, the sound echoing through the canyon like a weeping chorus.
---
The battle was unlike any Elwin had fought before.
The Warden did not bleed. It mourned. With each strike, it whispered forgotten names, calling on memories of broken oaths and fallen comrades. Its strength came from regret—and it sought to bury Elwin beneath his own.
But he held on.
To the image of her reaching out through the flames.
To the last words she had spoken before the monastery burned.
To the promise he made, wordless and absolute: I will find you.
With a final surge, he drove his blade into the Warden's chest. Not through flesh, but through the echo of sorrow that anchored it to this world.
The Warden staggered.
Then, it bowed.
"Then may your sorrow guide you… to her," it rasped—before its form dissolved into ash and whispering wind.
---
Elwin collapsed to one knee, chest heaving. He gazed into the fog ahead, where the Warden had stood, now only silence.
Somewhere beyond, she waited.
He stood.
And walked into the mist.
The descent had no end.
Aymelle walked barefoot across the fractured stones, each step echoing softly against the silence that blanketed the abyss. Around her, the mist shimmered with memory—shapes and voices not her own. Murmurs of old prayers. Laughter that turned to screams. Tears that fell, yet never touched the earth.
The Source of the Crying Remains lived up to its name.
It was not merely a place, but a soul—one drowned in sorrow.
She pressed forward, guided by the ache in her heart and the pulse of something ancient blooming in her chest. The closer she came to its center, the heavier her limbs became, as if grief itself coiled around her bones, whispering, You are not enough. You were never enough.
And then she saw it.
A vast chamber opened before her, circular and hollow, its ceiling lost to darkness. At its center, a pool of silver tears shimmered quietly, untouched by time. Surrounding it stood monoliths carved from obsidian, each etched with a name—names she somehow knew, though she had never heard them.
Here was where the world mourned.
And in its heart… her reflection.
She knelt at the edge of the pool, gazing into the liquid sorrow.
In it, she saw herself—not as she was, but as she had been.
A girl of kindness and fragility, singing in sunlit gardens. A novice with trembling hands who feared the world beyond monastery walls.
But the reflection began to change.
Her eyes darkened. Wings of shadow unfurled behind her. A crown of broken light formed above her brow.
She saw power. Terrible, beautiful, weeping power.
And then—Elwin.
Standing in the flames, reaching for her.
Her heart stuttered.
"Elwin…"
A voice answered—not his, but something older. Something buried deep within the tears.
"He walks the path of sorrow for you, child of the weeping."
"Will you become the blade that cuts through fate? Or the chain that binds him still?"
She did not answer.
She stood.
Walked into the pool.
And fell—
---
She awoke not in water, but in memory.
The chamber was gone.
Now she stood in the monastery garden, but it was wrong—twisted. The flowers bled, the sky wept, and the statues of saints stared down with hollow eyes.
In the center stood a figure—cloaked, faceless, humming the same melody she once sang.
"Who are you?" she asked.
The figure raised its head. Its face was hers.
But the eyes… the eyes belonged to something else.
"I am the tears you hid," it said. "The pain you buried. The truth you feared."
Aymelle stepped back.
"You're not me."
"But I am."
And the shadow charged.
---
The battle was not of flesh, but of spirit.
Each clash echoed not with steel, but with grief.
Memories were weapons. Regrets, armor.
The shadow struck her with visions—Elwin dying in the fire. The other orphans screaming her name. The moment she chose silence over sacrifice.
But Aymelle stood.
For each sorrow flung against her, she remembered the warmth of Elwin's hands. The strength in his promise. The hope in his gaze.
"I will not be broken by what I was."
Tears welled in her eyes—not of despair, but of defiance.
She screamed.
The sound shattered the false world.
---
She awoke—again—kneeling in the pool of tears.
But now, something had changed.
Around her, the monoliths pulsed with faint light. Her hands glowed with silver veins, and from her back unfurled translucent wings formed not of feathers, but of flowing, living sorrow.
And in her chest, the power of the Crying Remains answered her call.
The tears no longer held her captive.
They were her weapon.
---
Far above, on the outer rim of the canyon, a pulse of silver light pierced the mist for but a moment.
Elwin, trudging through the fog with bleeding feet and fire in his eyes, paused.
He looked toward the source of the light, and whispered only one name.
"Aymelle…"