“How did this happen?” Vera asked after a while, watching the image of the Godgrave and the fractures hanging through it, suspended in the textile-gray vista in front of her.

  You forgot.

  The Whisper-Matron’s answer was short and final.

  “Yeah, I got that,” Vera said, giving up entirely on sounding proper or reverent—not that she’d been doing a particularly stellar job of it anyway—as she turned back toward the veiled figure. “But I mean the actual, concrete how. How does me forgetting cause something like this? You’re gods. You’re telling me you couldn’t stop it without me?”

  The goddess’s gaze remained both steady and unreadable on her.

  Hollow does not steward the dominions of man. We are not the Hollow of ages past, so easily yielded to the perils of unbounded domains. You have seen what becomes of those who are.

  Vera frowned. “You’re talking about the Hollow King and the Ashkeeper?”

  Erelseth inclined her head slightly.

  Those two served as the final bosses of the first and second expansions, and they were remnants of the pantheon once known as the Triad of Quiet Flame. They used to rule over a portion of the current House Hollow’s domain, and in Ashen Legacy’s lore, part of the reason that the Amber Throne had fallen and the last age ended was because of them abusing their powers.

  “So House Hollow and its gods won’t—or can’t—interfere directly with the mortal realm in order to avoid the same fate as those gods.”

  Vera already knew most of that. Or at least that modern divinity didn’t walk the world the way older gods had. But she hadn’t realized that that distance was intentional.

  She shook her head. “Alright, fine. But you still act indirectly. So what was it about me ‘remembering’ that somehow kept a Forgotten Throne contained?”

  She genuinely didn’t see how that was supposed to work.

  Memory is presence.

  The meaning settled into her mind.

  Yet memory is treacherous. That which should not be remembered can be recalled. That which must be remembered can be forgotten.

  Vera stared at the goddess. “…I’m sorry, but I don’t actually know what to do with that.”

  A small part of her almost bristled at how openly lost she sounded. She liked being the version of Veralyth Mournvale who appeared to have things under control, at least on the surface. But by now, here, it felt pointless to keep pretending even slightly.

  Better to just admit when she was out of her depth and move on.

  Erelseth’s gaze never wavered. And yet, Vera sensed something there that made her pause.

  Chosen, you have undertaken the Rite of Stillness through the Unremembered One.

  “I… have,” Vera said, unsure about whether this was supposed to tie into her question or redirect it.

  As Chosen, he is closely bound to you.

  Her brows lifted. “He is?”

  Do you know his domains?

  “…Not really.”

  The Bound Witness had described him as a warning of what Hollow becomes when memory is not stewarded. After nearly losing herself in his influence during the Rite, Vera had a pretty solid guess that it had to have something to do with things that didn’t settle. Looping memories, maybe. Impressions that refused to conclude. Or grief that just stayed.

  Remembrance that does not resolve.

  Grief never transitioning into burial.

  Identity persisting without progression.

  Stillness without end.

  The goddess’s meaning traveled through not just Vera’s mind but the space around her, reverberating outward like an echo harmonizing with the world.

  All that Hollow must not become.

  Behind Erelseth’s veil, something solemn fixed on Vera.

  He Who Sleeps Without Name carries this burden. One placed upon and accepted by him at House Hollow’s inception.

  Vera met that gaze, thinking.

  So… what? He was some form of… failure-state within the House? A god whose very domain and existence embodied the thing they needed to avoid? Like a divine pressure valve, ensuring the structure he was bound to couldn’t collapse into that state itself?

  “Is that why he has to remain forgotten?” she asked. “So there’s no risk of interpretation? No chance of people recontextualizing him?”

  She’d always assumed the game barely mentioned him because he wasn’t important. Now it sounded like the opposite. As far as Vera was aware, gods generally didn’t change just because mortals viewed them differently. The same didn’t necessarily go for aspects, though, and the Unremembered One’s role almost sounded more similar to that.

  The Whisper-Matron didn’t answer directly, but something in her Resonance shifted just enough for Vera to tell she wasn’t completely off.

  That, at least, made the Bound Witness make more sense. A specter was a type of memory given form, after all. What better thing to set watching over such a god’s resting place than something that didn’t remember in the conventional sense?

  “But how does this tie into the Chosen?”

  That still wasn’t entirely clear.

  House Hollow stewards memory.

  Erelseth’s response came.

  Silence. Burial. Stillness.

  The goddess lifted her arm, and the vision of the Godgrave dissolved. In its place, her robes unfurled into a vast, gray expanse—an ocean of ash stretching endlessly outward. Scattered throughout it were fractures like The Silence Between, places where reality thinned and came apart.

  But there were others too.

  Irregularities suspended in place, different from the Silence. They hovered in a strange half-state, shifting almost imperceptibly between perfect stillness and the suggestion of vague motion, then back again. Caught in loops that never quite progressed.

  The dominions of man are so fragile. Mere memories of the past can wreak devastation.

  Suddenly, a pale thread of pure Resonance rose from one of those suspended shapes. Then another. And another. They drew toward Vera, converging—

  —and stopped just short of her, arrested as though by an unseen, cut tether.

  The Hollow cannot bear these memories for mortals.

  The Whisper-Matron’s words pressed in, inexorably present.

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  So our Chosen was tasked to do so. The Chosen remembers that which must be remembered by them alone—as it should be remembered. Unresolved. Contained.

  Vera’s eyes traced the threads, following them from the space before her out to the suspended shapes scattered across the expanse.

  And it clicked.

  “You’re… holding back threats,” she said slowly. “Keeping them from manifesting in the mortal realm.”

  She reached for the thread. It recoiled slightly at her touch.

  “You’re using the Unremembered One’s power, right?” she continued. “That’s why he’s sealed under Marrowfen.”

  She’d thought it strange that a god of House Hollow was here. Because like the Whisper-Matron said, they didn’t interfere directly much. Much less walk this plane. But in this case, maybe it was necessary. If his domain was remembrance that never resolved—identity persisting without progression—then just as Vera had nearly been caught in the endless looping of the Rite, the same thing could be done to others.

  A Forgotten Throne was powerful. They were also very different from most of the modern gods. If one of those went up against a god directly, maybe the god wouldn’t stand a chance. Vera honestly wasn’t sure.

  But what if it wasn’t the Throne itself? What if it was only a memory of one? A memory of it at its weakest point. Or at a moment where it was particularly susceptible.

  If that memory was held unresolved and suspended in a state of perpetual near-stillness, then maybe that was enough to contain something like that. At least to stop it from manifesting in this realm.

  She couldn’t pretend to understand how that actually worked. What kind of memory it would take, or what sort of structure was required to maintain containment on that scale. But she thought she at least understood the role the Chosen had been playing.

  A memory only existed for as long as someone remembered it, after all. And a memory contained within the mortal realm probably required someone in the mortal realm to hold it.

  The moment they didn’t—

  Whatever that memory was holding back would start to move again.

  Like The Silence Between had.

  Vera pulled her hand back from the thread of Resonance, raking it through her head as she exhaled slowly.

  So when Veralyth Mournvale forgot, the system had broken. The old ‘her’ must have known that. Which meant whatever circumstances had led to the current situation couldn’t have been simple.

  That worried her.

  What worried her more was that the Silence didn’t appear to be the only thing being held back this way.

  Her gaze slid between the other irregularities suspended across the expanse.

  Were all of those memories she’d forgotten? They didn’t appear to have escaped yet—not like the Silence had—but was that just a matter of time? Considering the damage the Silence had already caused, she didn’t even want to imagine what might happen if one more tribulation of similar scale slipped free.

  She looked back to the Whisper-Matron. “Will you help me remember again?”

  The goddess inclined her head.

  Yes.

  “Can you help me remember my original memories as well?”

  Her head shook.

  No.

  Vera’s mouth pulled into a thin line.

  She didn’t really fancy the idea of remembering whatever memories were keeping these things contained. The Whisper-Matron had said another Chosen wouldn’t have been able to shoulder the burden, which suggested it wasn’t simply remembering. There had to be some strain involved. A cost.

  But she couldn’t just ignore it.

  This was the world she lived in now.

  It was the world her daughter lived in.

  Vera looked back at the suspended irregularities, at the fractures of unraveling spread throughout the gray.

  “What is the Reckoning?” she asked after a moment. “You said that’s why the burden on the Chosen keeps growing.”

  Was that the same thing Veyrith had called the Slow Reckoning?

  The Slow Reckoning approaches.

  The Whisper-Matron’s meaning settled heavily, confirming her suspicion.

  The dominions of man Resonate more closely with Truth.

  Vera frowned slightly. “Truth? As in, capital T?”

  The goddess didn’t answer.

  “…What does that mean?”

  Truth is that which exists beyond. Resonance aligns with Truth, and the mortal dominions draw nearer to it. The end of an age may approach once more. The tribulations of man are its sign.

  “But what is Truth?”

  That is not for the Chosen to know.

  “But you know, don’t you?”

  Once more, there was silence.

  Vera’s frown deepened.

  By now, she thought she at least had a rough idea of what the Slow Reckoning was supposed to be—at least from the perspective of someone who’d played the game. Ashen Legacy had been an MMO, and that came with an unavoidable form of power creep. In-game, that had meant the level cap started at 50 and jumped by 50 with every expansion.

  By the first expansion, players were already among the most powerful characters in the setting.

  Here, that was only the Fifth Flamebinding.

  Barely Kindled.

  At first, Vera had assumed that was just game logic being awkwardly translated into reality. That levels in the game actually functioned differently here. But she’d felt firsthand that it wasn’t when she experienced echoes of her past fights during her encounter with the Graven Daughter. And when she’d looked into it afterward, she’d found that before fifteen years ago, there were essentially no living people who had reached the Tenth Binding within the last century.

  The people walking around not even a decade ago would have been laughably weak by today’s standards.

  Somehow, everyone’s power had risen rapidly in a very short span of time. Talking with people, Vera had gotten the feeling that the general assumption was that the tribulations had forced people to grow—to unlock things that had once only existed in myths and legends.

  But the same seemed to be true of their enemies.

  Or rather… it might be more accurate to say their enemies had been weaker than they should have been.

  After all, knowing how strong she was now, it was strange that Vera and her ‘companions’ had—at only the Fifth Binding—been able to kill a being like the Hollow King when his servant alone had easily taken down a Tenth Binding like Vanded not long ago.

  “Does ‘Truth’ have something to do with being Truebound?” she asked.

  That was another term for Cycle-forged, and it seemed to be the one that the Silent Lord had preferred. That felt like too much of a coincidence to ignore.

  The Truebound are those who have surpassed the limits of man’s dominions.

  Came Erelseth’s reply.

  “How does someone become one, then?”

  There is no path to become Truebound.

  Vera glanced back at the goddess. “But I’m Truebound, aren’t I?”

  Yes.

  “Then that statement doesn’t fly.”

  The Whisper-Matron regarded her for several long seconds.

  “I mean,” Vera added, “it doesn’t seem accurate to say there’s no path.”

  Mortals will forever remain bound within the strictures of the Bindings.

  “…You’re saying I’m not mortal?”

  No. You are mortal.

  “Then you’re contradicting yourself.”

  No.

  “You are, because if—”

  A path is a construct of the Bindings.

  Vera fell quiet as the meaning of those words settled over her.

  Mortals progress only where the Bindings permit progression. What lies beyond their limits is not reached. It is merely exceeded.

  “…And how does one exceed it?”

  We cannot say.

  “Why?”

  For there is no path.

  Vera exhaled through her nose.

  She felt like she was just shy of a proper understanding, but she was missing something. And she wasn’t going to get more than what she’d been given. How was she supposed to interpret it, though? Were those who became Truebound special in some way the gods couldn’t chart or replicate?

  Could it have something to do with the game? Or was that entirely unrelated?

  Her hands dropped to her sides as she studied the veiled face of the goddess, and the shifting gray expanse that still unfurled faintly from her robes.

  It wasn’t as easy to pry answers out of Erelseth as she’d hoped. But she had learned some important things. Now there were only a few things left that she wanted to know…

  “Do you know who Serel is?”

  The goddess’s Resonance shifted, just slightly, like a ripple beneath still water.

  Your progeny. Spawn of our Chosen and House Emberward’s.

  “…Please don’t say spawn.”

  A brief flicker of what might actually have been curiosity entered the Resonance brushing against Vera.

  Why not?

  She grimaced faintly. “…It’s just icky.”

  Somehow, that particular word seemed to catch the goddess off guard.

  …Icky?

  The word’s meaning echoed from the Whisper-Matron, testing it. After a moment, she inclined her head, as if filing the concept away.

  You yet remain the Chosen we found.

  Vera was a bit unsure what to make of that comment, but she didn’t want to get sidetracked. “About Serel—do you know what she is?”

  Yes. She was created by the Graven Daughter.

  “Why?”

  We cannot say.

  “Can’t, or don’t know?” Vera pressed. “Is there something stopping you?”

  The Resonance around the Whisper-Matron tightened subtly.

  We do not know. The girl is real and not real. The Daughter is too old. Even memory does not fully hold her, and the blood of her inheritance admits neither burial nor silence.

  “What does that mean?” Vera paused, then sucked in a small breath. “Please. I’m asking as your Chosen. I’m just trying to keep her safe. If there’s anything you know that can help me with that, I need it.”

  The goddess observed her for a long, drawn-out moment.

  We cannot help you with your progeny, Chosen. If we could, we would. The Daughter is not within our reach.

  “But you did before,” Vera said. “When I lost her, I went to the Quiet Hall in Marrowfen. You showed me how to reach Serel.”

  The gaze on her shifted. The Resonance pressing against Vera changed in a way she felt immediately. It wasn’t quite pressuring, but it was noticeably sharper.

  …We did not.

  Vera stiffened. “What? Then who—?”

  Chosen, we cannot answer your question.

  The space grew heavier. Shapes stirred at the edges of her vision—indistinct and numerous, like half-formed figures waiting just beyond resolution.

  The Rite cannot persist much longer. No more questions. You will retain House Hollow’s support, but you must remember once more.

  The pressure eased slightly.

  Will you bear the burden again?

  Vera glanced at the shapes surrounding them. She studied the quiet Resonance stemming from them. Then she looked back at the Whisper-Matron.

  “…Any chance I’ll regret it afterward?”

  Yes. But there is no other to bear it in your place. None that would live.

  Vera let out a breath.

  “Alright,” she said. “Hit me.”