Francesca was the first to speak.
She stood tall at the edge of Guria's border gate, where rusted iron met crumbling stone and wild thorns coiled like they meant to reclaim it all. Behind her, the cracked path snaked into a village half-consumed by mist-its rooftops bowed, shutters rotted, and cobblestones split by creeping weeds. The air was thick with salt, moss, and something faintly wrong-like old blood rinsed clean by too many rains.
Francesca didn't flinch.
She wore no uniform-just a traveler's coat, dark and road-worn, its edges singed from past campsites. But her stance betrayed her purpose. Ocean-blue eyes scanned the scene like a soldier, sharp and unapologetic. Her wind-tangled braid rested over one shoulder, and at her hip hung a thin dagger-clean, ceremonial-looking, but clearly used before.
"You the one in charge here?"
Dantes looked up from where he crouched, brushing dust off his gloves. The village behind him was silent. Too silent-like it knew the Wane wasn't far from bleeding through its veins.
Now this girl stood before him like she was measuring the ruin he stood in-and deciding whether it was worth salvaging.
"That depends," he said, voice dry. "Are you here to bring trouble, or just judgment?"
Francesca smiled, but there was nothing soft about it.
"Neither," she said. "We're just passing through."
"You're not from around here."
"No," she said. "But someone said this place had a story. I'm fond of broken things."
From behind her, another figure emerged-quieter, almost unseen at first.
Dantes felt her before he truly saw her.
Alberta stepped forward from the tall golden reeds, a hood drawn over her hair. Her cloak was a simple ash-grey, thin and worn from the road, but it moved like silk. She carried no weapon at her side, but there was something sharper in the way she walked-measured, graceful, sure.
Her hair glinted like fire beneath the rising light-a deep orange that caught at the sun like a dying ember refusing to fade. Her frame was built for movement-elegant, but grounded, as if she had once been meant for a ballroom, then taught herself how to run through forests instead. Her amber-gold eyes swept the outpost with quiet precision. Watching. Listening.
And something else-something older-moved with her.
The wind shifted the moment she arrived.
Dantes felt it in his chest like a plucked string. A familiarity that shouldn't have been there.
He looked away.
Francesca stepped forward again, holding out a rolled parchment-worn, not official. It bore no crest, only dirt and time.
"We heard rumors. Three trade routes cross near this place. And one of the last protective crystals was stationed here, wasn't it?"
Dantes's expression hardened. "You're not here for rest, then."
"No one wanders into the Wane's teeth for rest."
"Then say what you want to say."
There was a pause.
Then, Alberta finally spoke.
Her voice was low. Soft. But it cut like cold water in a still pond.
"Does the name Mercedes mean anything to you?"
The moment shattered.
His breath caught.
The name cracked open something buried too deep.
The air twisted, sharp as frost crawling over bone. His vision blurred at the edges. That name shouldn't have mattered.
But it did.
Flashes- A woman with flame-colored hair.
Eyes like his.
A lullaby hummed in a stone corridor.
A scream too familiar for any child to forget.
His fingers twitched. The scar beneath his tunic pulsed, aching with memory.
Alberta took a small step closer.
"She was someone we lost in Jesmeurdam. A villager spoke her name before he died. We thought-maybe-you might know more."
"Stop."
Dantes cut her off-voice low, cold, final.
Both women halted.
Francesca's brows furrowed, her fingers curling tight at her side. Alberta's expression stayed still-but Dantes caught it. A flicker. Not recognition. Something worse.
Pity.
He hated it.
"Mercedes is a ghost," he muttered. "And I don't chase ghosts."
He turned his back to them.
But his hand trembled at his side.
As Francesca and Alberta exchanged a quiet glance, Dantes vanished into the fog that clung to Guria's ruined fields-fields once golden with harvest, now cracked and hollow from the Wane's slow breath.
He didn't know why the name had cut him open.
Didn't know why the girl with fire-bright hair looked like a dream he wasn't ready to remember.
Didn't know the world had already begun to pull their threads together.
But the scar on his chest burned.
And from far, far below, a voice whispered-
"You cannot run from names... not even your own."