The path out of Brindlehollow curved through a dead orchard twisted trees, no leaves, the bones of old harvests littering the ground.
Kael walked with his head low, fingers brushing the hilt at his side more from habit than fear. Liora was behind him, quieter than usual, but her presence steady as breath.
"Something's coming," she said eventually.
Kael didn't turn. "You feel it too?"
"Not danger. Just... change."
They reached a clearing where an old stone shrine stood crooked and forgotten. Moss clung to it like a second skin. Someone had once carved symbols here weathered runes, chipped with time.
Liora placed her hand on the stone. "It's old magic. Not alive anymore, but not gone either."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "That supposed to comfort me?"
"No. It's supposed to remind you that not everything broken is useless."
He sat down beside the shrine and pulled out the map. Their next path cut through a ruin Kael knew too well a battlefield with no name, only grief.
"You sure you're ready to go back there?" Liora asked, crouching beside him.
He stared at the ink lines. "No. But I don't think I'll ever be ready. And maybe that's the point."
They camped by the shrine that night. And as the wind passed through dead branches like a whisper too tired to speak, Liora unwrapped a piece of cloth from her pack.
Inside: a worn-out ribbon, frayed at the edge.
Kael blinked. "Is that… from before?"
She nodded. "My sister tied it in my hair the day I left home. Said it'd make me harder to forget."
Kael stared at it. "Did it work?"
Liora smiled faintly. "She's still dead. But I remember her every time the wind shifts."
He didn't answer. He didn't have to.
They both understood the weight of memory and the power of the small things we carry just to feel a little less lost.