WARCRAFT FOREVER: ECHOES OF THE SHATTERED CROWNS - Novel, Author: New Format

Legacy of the Shattered Crowns

A Fan Novella • New Format • 4 October 2026

An original, alternative story inspired by the world of Warcraft, developing New Format’s campaign concept. This is not an official story or an announcement by Blizzard Entertainment. The new characters, places and events belong to this fan-created vision.

Prologue. The Voice Beneath the Stone

The first to speak was a boy who had been dead for forty years.

“Father, don’t open the western gate.”

The labourer standing in the middle of the excavation had broad shoulders and a grey beard. A moment earlier, he had been cursing the broken handle of his shovel. Now he spoke in the thin, uncertain voice of a child.

Maren stopped across the street.

He did not need to breathe, but the reflex remained. He drew in air so sharply that his dry throat gave a brief whistle. His lantern struck his knee.

“Say that again,” he said.

The labourer stared through him.

“There are soldiers behind the wagons. They aren’t wearing our colours.”

Maren knew that pause before the final word. His son had always drawn breath there, as though afraid no one would let him finish.

He could no longer remember the boy’s face. Only a few small things remained: soot beneath his fingernails, a shoelace tied in three knots, the warmth of a hand reaching out in sleep. For years, Maren had feared that these remnants would vanish too.

He knelt beside the excavation.

A black stone gleamed beneath the labourer’s feet. Golden veins formed letters across its surface: letters Maren did not know, yet almost understood.

“Tavin?”

The man blinked. The child’s voice was gone.

“What’s happened to my hand?”

He stared at his palm as someone might stare at an object found in another person’s pocket.

Soldiers came running from the northern street. Among them walked a woman in a scratched silver breastplate. Her blue cloak was still dusty from the road.

Maren shielded the stone.

“Please,” he said, before she could give an order. “Don’t take it away yet.”

1. The Stone Beneath the Ashes

Captain Elira Vossan had brought three things of her mother’s to Lordaeron: a ring, a key and a plan of a house.

She wore the ring beneath her glove. The key fitted none of the locks that had survived. The plan had been drawn on the back of a receipt for flour and showed a kitchen larger than the whole flat her mother had lived in afterwards.

The house was supposed to stand on Linden Street.

A drainage ditch now ran where the street had been.

Elira put the paper away before her sergeant could see it.

“The well first,” she ordered. “Then a roof over the wounded. The walls can wait.”

Ashen Haven had seven inhabited streets, three towers on the verge of collapse and more claimants to authority than ovens. The expedition’s commander, Marshal Halvek, had sent her to bring order to the settlement. He had assigned her a hundred soldiers, two dwarven sappers and supplies for nineteen days.

He had not mentioned the undead living beneath the eastern wall.

By the time she reached the excavation, the crowd around it was already arguing. Someone demanded a priest; someone else, a rope. The grey-bearded labourer was weeping because he did not know his wife’s name.

The undead man with the lantern sat beside him.

“Clear everyone back,” Elira said. “Take this man to the infirmary.”

“Don’t touch the stone,” Maren said.

“Why?”

“Because it answered before anyone asked a question.”

She ordered the find covered with canvas. Only then did she notice light showing through her own glove. The labourer had caught her wrist earlier.

For a brief moment, she remembered stairs she had never seen. A red shoe lay on the third step.

The image vanished.

That evening, a scholar arrived in a grey cloak. He brought medicines, clean bandages and a letter of recommendation from the settlers’ council. He introduced himself as Aldren.

He examined the stone without touching it. Instead of an instrument, he took out a notebook filled with tiny handwriting.

“This isn’t an isolated relic,” he said. “The rest must be underground.”

“A weapon?” Elira asked.

Aldren glanced at the labourer, whose wife sat beside his bed. The man held her hand politely, as though it belonged to a stranger.

“Perhaps a cure,” he replied.

Maren remembered that he had not answered the question.

2. Homes Without Owners

Two days later, Elira found a house like the one in the drawing.

It did not stand on Linden Street, but it had a low east-facing window and an alcove for an oven. Inside, an undead woman was sewing a child’s jacket. She had replaced her missing fingers with thin metal sleeves.

“Is this a requisition?” she asked at the sight of the uniform.

“A census.”

The woman gave her name: Sella. Then she reached for a scorched document. The paper was so fragile that she lifted it together with the board beneath it.

Ownership of the house had been confirmed a hundred years earlier. The surname did not match the one she used now.

“I was a wife then,” she explained. “Then a widow. Apparently I can’t be either any more.”

A living girl was hanging washing in the yard. Elira glanced at Sella.

“Your daughter?”

“A neighbour. Her mother never came back from a journey. Her name is Nela.”

The captain set aside the form for clearing the building.

That afternoon, Halvek assigned houses throughout the eastern district to the settlers.

“Our people are returning to their homeland,” he announced over the map.

“Someone already lives there.”

“Someone remained there. It isn’t the same thing.”

Elira wanted to answer, but the marshal pushed a bundle of petitions towards her. She read family names, numbers of children, inventories of lost property. In every letter, she recognised her own mother.

That evening, she returned to Sella. The undead woman came out onto the porch and silently handed her a bowl of hot water.

“You have blood on your sleeve.”

“From the well. A rope cut a labourer’s hand.”

For a while, they stood side by side. Inside, Nela was singing under her breath, getting every other line wrong.

“My mother said it always smelled of bread here,” Elira said.

“Sometimes sewage,” Sella replied. “Especially in summer.”

The captain laughed before she could stop herself.

For the first time since crossing the border, someone had described her homeland as though they had actually lived in it.

3. The Purge Order

The order arrived before dawn.

The eastern district was to be sealed, searched and cleared of forces outside the command’s authority. Halvek’s seal stood beneath the document. Below it, in smaller writing, was a prohibition against delaying the operation on account of civilians.

Elira read that line three times.

Two wagons loaded with oil waited in the square.

“To burn out the contamination,” Lieutenant Deren explained.

“Who confirmed there was contamination?”

He did not answer.

The district’s windows had been barricaded. Maren came out to meet the soldiers unarmed, a book beneath his arm. A dozen or so guards stood behind him. Some wore armour older than the families of Elira’s soldiers.

“There are children here,” he said.

“Open the passage to the sewers. We’ll take a census.”

“You already did. Six people were taken yesterday.”

Elira looked at Deren.

The lieutenant reached for his whistle.

The first arrow came from a rooftop. It struck a soldier in the throat. Someone screamed, crossbows rose together, and a man beside the wagon lit a torch.

Elira struck his wrist with her sword hilt. The flame fell into the mud.

“Shields! No fire!”

Deren put the whistle to his lips. She tore it away, taking a piece of skin from his lip with it.

An undead archer appeared on the roof. Maren shouted his name, but it was too late. Two bolts threw him down onto the cobbles.

Nela ran through the open gate, dragging a younger boy behind her. Elira raised her shield over their heads.

After that, there was no time to judge her own decisions. She had to stop soldiers who had seen a comrade killed, and undead who had seen the wagons of oil.

An hour later, the district was still standing. Seven people were dead.

Elira gave Deren his broken whistle.

“Tell the marshal I refused.”

“They’ll take your command.”

She looked at the soldier’s body beside the gate. He had been seventeen. Yesterday, he had asked whether he would be given land when his service ended.

“I know.”

4. The Book of Names

Maren would not allow pages to be torn out.

When water flooded the lower crypt, he had carried the books out one by one. When fuel ran short, he had given up his own shelves. Sella said that one day he would burn with the books because he would be trying to decide which to save first.

Now he could take only one chest.

Halvek had withdrawn his men from the district but cut off its supplies. By evening, his sappers had begun positioning cannon. Maren did not believe the marshal would wait for a surrender.

Several dozen residents gathered beside the crypt. The living and the undead were divided only according to who could carry a load.

Elira arrived without her insignia of rank. Eighteen soldiers accompanied her.

“Is that all who remained?” he asked.

“That’s how many chose to stay.”

She helped close the chest. On top lay a slender volume bound in grey cloth. Maren instinctively covered its title.

She noticed.

In the sewers, they waded waist-deep through cold water. Sella carried Nela. The girl had fallen asleep with her cheek against Sella’s neck, as though that hard, dead skin were the safest place in the world.

The first report sounded behind them.

Maren stopped.

In the crypt, he had left tablets bearing the names of people he could not connect to any family. He had meant to return to them after winter. He always returned after winter.

“We’re moving,” Elira said.

“I haven’t got them all.”

“We haven’t got everyone here, either.”

She pointed to the rear of the column. An elderly man had slumped against the wall. Maren handed the book to the captain and went back for him.

When they emerged beyond the wall, the sky over the district was orange.

Aldren was waiting with wagons and dressings.

Without being asked, he organised people to help, gave water to a wounded man and knelt beside a child who could not stop shaking.

Maren wanted to thank him.

Instead, he asked:

“How did you know where we’d come out?”

“I knew these sewers before their entrances were buried.”

It was a reasonable answer. That was precisely why Maren remembered it so clearly.

5. The Price of a Memory

Beneath the excavation, they discovered a hall supported by seven pillars.

At its centre hung a ring of black stone divided into segments. Golden conduits ran through the walls towards empty niches. The device resembled a crown someone had tried to fit to a giant’s head.

Aldren called it the Archive of the Last Names.

Maren did not ask how he knew its name.

“Only for a moment,” he said.

The scholar laid a hand on a lever.

“The echo may be incomplete.”

“So am I.”

Light enveloped his face.

He was standing in the kitchen again. Rain struck the windowsill. Tavin sat at the table, sharpening a pencil with a knife he was not allowed to touch.

Maren could not see his face clearly, but he heard the chair creak. He felt an anger so ordinary and alive that he almost laughed.

“How many times have I told you…”

The boy looked at him.

“Father, don’t open the western gate.”

The kitchen vanished.

Someone was screaming on the stone floor.

Nela stood beside the stairs. Sella reached towards her, but the girl backed away as though she had seen a monster.

“I don’t know you! Don’t touch me!”

Maren tore his hand from the ring. The light dimmed.

Aldren was already beside the child.

“It’s temporary. An overload of adjacent traces.”

“Give them back to her,” Maren said.

“It isn’t that simple.”

“Take mine. Give hers back.”

Aldren said nothing.

Magister Sereth came down into the hall. He had arrived that morning with blood elves and crates of equipment. Now he walked around the device, reading its shifting symbols.

“This doesn’t create memories,” he said. “It needs somewhere to hold them.”

“You don’t know that,” Aldren replied.

Sereth pointed to a conduit pulsing in time with Nela’s breathing.

“I do now.”

Elira cut the conduit with her sword. The blade snapped at the hilt.

The girl lost consciousness.

When she woke, she recognised her own name. She was still afraid of Sella.

Maren remained outside the infirmary until morning. For the first time in many years, he did not open a single book.

6. A Witness Against Their Own

The grey volume contained dates, transports and signatures.

Elira read the first page by accident while drying the books brought out of the sewer. Then she read the next. On the third, she found her father’s name.

He had returned from an expedition to Lordaeron missing two fingers. He said he had lost them fighting bandits. At home, nothing more was said about it.

The document described a convoy turned away from the gate. Infection was suspected among the refugees. They had been ordered to wait in the quarry.

At the bottom was the signature of Halvek, then a lieutenant.

Beside it stood the mark of the captain of the guard: Maren.

She found him beside Nela’s bed.

“You were there.”

He did not deny it.

“I was still alive.”

“Is that supposed to change something?”

“No.”

She led him into the corridor. For the first time, she noticed that he did not carry the lantern to see better. Its light fell mostly on his hands.

“My father dug beneath the fence,” she said. “His fingers froze in the earth. All his life, he said he had lost them in battle.”

Maren stared at the closed book.

“We were told to wait for the investigators. Then for new orders. Then it was too late.”

“Why did you keep this?”

“So I couldn’t say I’d forgotten.”

Towards evening, Halvek sent a man with an offer. Elira would regain her command. The refugees would receive food. The grey volume was to be handed to the authorities for examination.

She refused in front of witnesses.

An hour later, attackers came through the storehouse window. Maren recognised two undead guards among them. Their commander was named in the book as well.

Their shared past did not stop them. Sella did, by overturning a shelving unit into the entrance, and Elira, fighting with a short sword borrowed from a wounded man.

In the morning, Maren began transcribing the documents. He made four copies.

In each, he left his own signature.

7. The Iron Crossing

Roghan Irontrail disliked bridges.

Every one looked reasonable on a map, then proved too narrow for the wounded, the wagons and somebody’s pride.

This one also had a cracked central pier.

“Five wagons will get across,” the goblin Keszik judged, leaning out over the water. “The sixth might have to swim.”

“We have seven.”

“Good. No need to wonder whether the last one will make it.”

That afternoon, refugees appeared on the opposite bank. A human captain led them. Behind her, Roghan saw undead and instinctively put a hand on his axe.

Elira halted the column beyond bowshot.

“I need a crossing.”

“I need to know you won’t bring your war here.”

A cannon thundered in the distance.

“You’re too late for that condition,” she replied.

Roghan had been ordered to secure the road and supply transports for allied settlements. He was not to take part in the dispute over Lordaeron. His wagons carried flour. Among Elira’s people, he saw children who had not eaten any for a long time.

“Throw off two crates of parts,” he ordered.

Keszik pressed his lips together.

“Those are pumps for the winter mines.”

“I know.”

The goblin stared at the river for a long time. Then he prised open a lid himself, pulled out the smallest components and tucked them into his belt.

The crossing began under fire. The tauren Borun stood at the edge of the bridge, shielding the wounded. Arrows struck the wood with dry cracks. Roghan crossed last, with the rear guard.

The central pier gave way while people were still on the planks.

Borun dropped his shield and seized a beam. For a few breaths, he held the tilting span with the weight of his own body.

Roghan turned back.

The tauren looked at him and shook his head.

Behind the orc, a boy was limping on a leg splinted with boards.

Roghan tucked him under one arm. As he leapt onto the bank, the bridge broke behind him.

That evening, Elira brought Borun’s axe, recovered from the shallows.

“Write down his name,” Roghan told Maren.

“I will.”

“Not that he died at the crossing. Write down who he brought across.”

8. The Caravan of Two Banners

The joint caravan set out two days later.

A wagon with a blue banner travelled at the front, one with a red banner at the rear. Keszik considered it the worst possible way to mark a transport.

“Now everyone will think we’re carrying something for the other side.”

“We are,” Elira replied.

“Exactly.”

They carried medicines, wounded people and four copies of the book. They had to return to the Haven. One conduit lay severed in the Archive’s hall, but Sereth had warned that the others could be activated without it.

Sella discovered the first attempt at sabotage. Someone had cut a strap beside a wheel too neatly for it to be an accident. The second came to light when a troll scout found a human soldier leaving a marker for their pursuers.

The young man admitted that Halvek was holding his brother.

Roghan wanted him tied to a wagon.

Elira wanted to send a squad for the brother.

Neither had enough soldiers.

They talked late into the night. Sitting at the other fire, Maren heard their voices gradually fall. It had been easier to argue while they could still pretend there was a solution.

In the end, the soldier remained under guard. The scout was given a letter for his brother and money to try to buy him out of the camp. Nobody called it a good plan.

Towards dawn, a messenger of the Eternal Order arrived. An open hand marked his grey cloak.

Aldren was offering a truce. He assured them that Halvek had agreed to talks, and that the Archive would help establish the truth without further bloodshed.

“The truth can be read,” Elira said, touching the chest.

The messenger gave her a weary look.

“It can also be disbelieved.”

She had no answer.

9. Honour in Retreat

The order to return was brought by an orc woman wearing a helmet with a red feather.

The expedition council had ruled that Roghan had exceeded his authority. He was to turn back, leave the transport to the human troops and report to command.

He spread the parchment on an empty crate that had held spare parts.

“If you leave now,” Elira said, “they’ll break us before sunset.”

“I know.”

“And if you stay?”

“My people could lose their pay. Their families have a winter coming too.”

She did not ask again.

Roghan summoned his warriors. He read the order in full, including the passage concerning his own arrest. He allowed anyone who wished to return to leave.

Eleven went.

He walked them to the road and clasped each forearm. Some looked more ashamed than he did.

That afternoon, Halvek’s cavalry arrived.

Roghan did not deploy the remaining troops around the wagons. He ordered the animals unhitched, the sick lifted into saddles and the food divided into sacks. Keszik set the wheels alight. Smoke concealed the descent into a dry riverbed.

“You’re abandoning the supplies?” Elira asked.

“I’m leaving the target they expect us to defend.”

The retreat lasted until nightfall. Several times they halted only to force their pursuers to deploy, then moved on before an attack could begin.

During the last change of position, a bolt struck Roghan beneath the collarbone. Elira cut through the straps of his armour.

“Tell Maren,” he rasped, “I’m alive. He’s not to write too soon.”

She laughed, though her hands were trembling.

When the forest appeared on the horizon, neither noticed the lights burning between its trees.

They were not torches.

10. The Forest of Others’ Battles

Naerys had seen this fire six times already.

The flames appeared at dusk, engulfed a dry pine and raced towards the stream. They gave no heat. They left no ash. Yet the animals fled, and the real roots beneath the tree died a little more each night.

The druid Elar touched the earth.

“The forest is trying to survive something that’s already over.”

“And it’s losing,” she replied.

When the scouts brought Elira to her, Naerys was ready to order every road closed. Then she saw Nela. The girl walked beside an undead woman, trying not to touch her hand.

“She remembers my soup,” Sella said, as though that explained something. “But she doesn’t remember me.”

Naerys knelt. Behind the child’s ear, she saw a faint golden glimmer, visible only from the side.

She had seen the same thing in the roots.

Maren told her about the Archive. He did not leave out his own request to summon his son.

“You’ve spread it,” Naerys said.

He did not deny it.

That evening, the forest attacked with a memory.

Faceless soldiers emerged from the mist. Their weapons passed through bodies, but everyone they touched briefly saw their own death. Two wounded men tried to flee. One fell into a ravine.

Naerys forbade anyone to pursue the phantoms. She placed real people beside real trees and told them to describe what they felt beneath their fingers.

“Bark,” Elira repeated. “Cold. Cracked. It’s here.”

Roghan sat against a trunk with his eyes closed.

“Wood,” he said. “Not a bridge. A tree.”

The apparitions did not vanish until morning.

Beneath the pine, Naerys found a small golden pin. It bore the sign of an open hand.

“This isn’t spreading by itself,” she said. “Someone is building a road.”

11. Root and Ash

Naerys marked three places on the map.

Three pins. Three streams flowing towards the Haven.

Elar wanted to extract the devices without disturbing the roots. Naerys believed they had no time. The phantoms were beginning to appear in daylight too.

Beside the last relay, they found a logging camp. Its inhabitants sat on the ground, answering questions no one had asked.

One woman rocked an empty blanket.

Elar stopped Naerys as she reached for a torch.

“If you cut everything off at once, they’ll be trapped inside.”

“If I don’t, there’ll be another settlement tomorrow.”

Maren opened his book.

“They need something to come back for.”

For the next few hours, they read out names. Sella brought objects from the huts: a spoon with a bent handle, a cracked comb, a shoe whose sole was coming away at the heel. Sometimes people took hold of them instinctively. Then they were asked for another memory, small and ordinary.

Naerys climbed between the roots to extract the pin. She heard her dead sister’s voice but did not turn her head. Not because she was certain it was a trick. She was afraid that if she saw the face, she would not be able to leave.

Elar held back the living coils while she cut the metal ones.

The tree split from within.

They got everyone out except the druid.

Naerys went back for him, but only his hand still protruded from the hollow. Beneath her fingers, it had the texture of bark.

“Stay,” she whispered.

She did not know whether she was asking him or the tree.

That evening, she cut a silver leaf from her armour and left it beside the root. Then she took the map.

“Lead me to the city.”

12. Voices Beneath the Water

No one in the depths could hear the Haven’s bells.

That was why Vasheryn knew at once that something was wrong.

The sound travelled through the water with unnatural clarity. With it came images of stairs climbed by creatures with legs, and faces no member of her court should have remembered.

At the foot of a submerged tower, she found a golden conduit.

It ran towards the coast.

Her rival, Prince Sareth of the Court of the Deep Fissure, arrived with an armed escort. He believed the newly discovered device would allow them to recover the lost archives of the sea’s great houses.

“Can’t you hear them?” he asked. “They’re speaking to us.”

Vasheryn heard many voices. None answered a question when it was asked a second time.

She laid her hand against the tower wall. She saw a chamber without water. A woman with her own face stood at a window, turning towards someone unseen.

For a moment, Vasheryn felt the weight of legs.

She remained at the wall one breath too long.

A guard caught her arm as she sank limply towards the seabed.

The prince laughed at her for fearing her own past.

She did not answer. Instead, she watched the soldier standing beside him. He was holding his trident the wrong way round and could not remember which hand he usually fought with.

That night, she cut the conduit. The prince’s troops attacked before the work was finished.

In the cramped ruins, heavy weapons caught against columns. Vasheryn extinguished her staff’s light and led her guards along the seabed, using the current. They emerged behind the attackers, disarmed them and left them in a side chamber.

The prince escaped with a fragment torn from the device.

Vasheryn did not pursue him. The main conduit still trembled. Somewhere on land, someone was powering the entire network.

For the first time in many years, she ordered an expedition to the surface.

13. The Law of the Surface

The first arrow was loosed by a man who had never seen a naga before.

It struck the stone beside Vasheryn’s hand.

He did not loose a second, because Elira struck his bow.

They met on flooded steps south of the city. On one side stood a dozen or so naga; on the other, exhausted soldiers and refugees. Planks from a wrecked boat floated between them.

Vasheryn raised the severed conduit.

“This came from your shore.”

Naerys took out the pin she had found in the forest. When joined, the components flared with light.

No one raised a weapon again.

The discussion lasted until the tide receded. The naga demanded that the devices in the sea be shut down, passage to their source, and the surrender of the fragment Prince Sareth intended to sell to the Order. Elira could promise help only with the first two demands.

“You do not rule this city?” Vasheryn asked.

“No.”

“Yet you negotiate its future.”

“Someone has to begin by saying what they can’t promise.”

Vasheryn studied her more closely.

Together, they cleared access to the harbour channel. The naga removed submerged beams while the humans pulled ropes. Standing waist-deep in water, Keszik instructed a two-metre-tall guard with a trident on how to prise up a rusted grate.

“Not harder. At a different angle. Yes. See? Civilisation.”

The guard bared his teeth. The goblin chose to regard it as a smile, since any other interpretation would make cooperation difficult.

That evening, Vasheryn’s patrol intercepted Sareth’s envoy with the fragment of the device. The prince remained at sea, but had lost the thing that might have bought him an alliance with the Order.

Maren compared the captured component with Sereth’s drawings. All the conduits converged beneath the city’s assembly hall.

Aldren did not intend to summon a single voice.

He was making room for the entire city.

14. The Conclave Behind Closed Doors

Sereth was waiting for them in the laboratory.

His notes lay on the table. Beside them stood an unfinished goblet of wine. The mage’s hands trembled so badly that he moved it away from the edge before he began to speak.

“I built the amplifiers.”

Elira took off her wet cloak.

“How many?”

“Nine. Three in the forest, three at sea, three beneath the city.”

“Did you know what they were for?”

“I was supposed to separate the echoes from living minds. Aldren claimed that if we gave them enough space, they would stop displacing the residents’ memories.”

Naerys placed the silver leaf on the table. She had retrieved it from the scorched earth before they left; she had not been able to leave it without a grave.

Sereth did not ask what it represented.

“When did you discover the mistake?” she asked.

“With the child.”

“Why did you keep working?”

The mage looked at his notes.

“Because I believed I was the only one who could put it right.”

From outside came the crash of closing gates. The Order’s guards had come for the records.

Sereth had no time left to ask for trust. He opened a cabinet, took out three crystals and smashed the first against the floor. The barriers in the corridor went dark. He handed the second to Keszik.

“If I start following someone else’s orders, destroy it.”

“With pleasure,” the goblin replied.

Sereth fitted the third crystal into his own pauldron.

They fought their way through the workshops, passing constructs that were still carrying out commands spoken hours earlier. One endlessly moved an empty crate. Another tried to repair a wall it was breaking apart itself.

At the rear exit, Sereth stopped before the apprentice guarding the door.

“Master? Aldren said you were ill.”

The mage took off his Conclave ring and placed it in her palm.

“Question my orders too.”

She stepped aside.

15. The Web of Oblivion

The plan was simple only when Sereth drew it on the table.

The sea conduits had to be disconnected before those in the forest. Otherwise, the energy would flow through the roots. Then two of the city relays had to be disabled, leaving the third intact so that active echoes would not be trapped inside people’s minds.

“And at the end?” Roghan asked.

“Someone has to go down to the Archive and open the outlet.”

Vasheryn gave him a hostile look.

“To you, the sea is always an outlet.”

Sereth unfolded a second drawing. He showed them empty crystals, conduits and the space above the hall where the stone ring was meant to break into inactive fragments.

“Not into the sea. Out of the device. But I don’t know how long the crystals will keep everything separate.”

“At last, an answer one can believe,” Naerys said.

They set out before dawn.

The naga descended beneath the harbour. Naerys returned towards the streams. Roghan and Elira entered the city from opposite sides, using passages Sella remembered.

At first, everything went according to plan.

Then the bells began.

People in the streets stopped at once. A blacksmith lowered his hammer. A soldier forgot the command he was shouting. A woman beside the well dropped her bucket and said, in someone else’s voice, that she did not want to go home.

Aldren spoke from the tower.

He assured them that the city was safe. He asked everyone to lay down their weapons and remain beside the nearest lantern of the Order.

Elira saw Halvek at the stairs leading to the wall.

“Turn it off,” she said.

The marshal looked at her in genuine surprise.

“Why? They’re about to stop being afraid.”

Behind him, soldiers were aiming cannon towards the district through which the refugees were trying to return.

Halvek still remembered what he wanted.

He simply no longer needed to remember whom he would do it to.

16. The Siege of the Haven

The city was besieged from within.

The Order’s guards occupied the crossroads, and Halvek’s men closed the gates. Soldiers stood on the walls convinced that they were protecting the residents from a plague. Residents hid in cellars convinced that a fire from forty years ago was approaching.

Elira had enough troops to secure either the gate or the infirmary.

Roghan’s reinforcements could come through the gate. In the infirmary lay Nela and thirty people who could not walk.

She ran to the infirmary.

The decision cost them the western square. By the time they returned to the fighting, Halvek’s cannon were in position.

Roghan came through the harbour channel, chest-deep in water, his wound open again. The naga accompanied him. One of Vasheryn’s guards carried a human crossbowman out on his shoulders, and the man immediately began covering the passage.

No one had time to comment on the sight.

Keszik set his last mechanism beneath an overturned wagon. Built from the parts salvaged beside the river, it pumped water onto the burning infirmary for nine minutes.

In the tenth minute, it broke.

Nine had been enough.

Naerys returned from the forest alone. The golden marks on her hands were fading. She had managed to disconnect the last relay, but now she remembered someone else’s house burning and could not stop checking whether her cloak was alight.

At the stairs to the wall, Elira caught up with Halvek.

The marshal drew his sword. He was the better swordsman. Before the expedition, he had taught her how not to betray an attack with her shoulder.

She applied the lesson.

She did not strike at him. She struck a terrace support weakened by the earlier bombardment. They both fell onto a lower platform. Halvek could not get up.

Elira put her blade to his throat.

“My father was in the quarry.”

“I was following orders.”

Below, Roghan waited with two soldiers.

Elira drew back her sword.

“You’ll say that in front of everyone.”

Once the marshal was bound, his troops began lowering their weapons. Not all of them. Not immediately. Enough, however, to open a route to the assembly hall.

Maren left Sella with Nela.

The girl caught his sleeve.

“If you meet my memories, tell them where I am.”

He promised, though for many years he had known that promises like that were the most dangerous of all.

17. The Archive of the Last Names

The underground hall was not dark.

Light flowed along the walls in dense bands. Faces moved within each one. Some disappeared at once; others opened their mouths as though trying to speak the name of the person before them.

Aldren waited beneath the ring.

He wore no armour. Dried blood stained his grey cloak, left by a wounded man he had helped before the fighting began.

“You can still stop the battle,” he said.

“We are stopping it,” Elira replied.

“Today. And tomorrow?”

He touched the stone.

Maren saw a square he did not know. Two little girls lay beneath an overturned bench. A man in a grey cloak was trying to lift a beam, though both his arms were broken.

Aldren let go of the device.

“They weren’t my enemies. They didn’t even know we lived there. Someone wanted to take a warehouse. Someone else refused to give it up. The reports said: minor civilian losses.”

Roghan leaned against a pillar. Naerys did not raise her weapon.

“You remember their deaths,” Maren said. “Do you remember their lives too?”

Aldren looked at him.

“Every day.”

“And yet you want to choose what other people are allowed to keep.”

“I want to take away what turns them into murderers.”

Sereth moved to a side console. He froze over its symbols.

“You can’t separate it,” he said. “Hatred is connected to a name. To a home. To the person they lost.”

“Which is why the whole must be rebuilt.”

At last, he had said it plainly.

Vasheryn raised her staff. Aldren clenched his hand, and the hall vanished.

Elira stood in her mother’s kitchen. Roghan heard the bridge breaking. Naerys saw a hand made of bark. Vasheryn found herself at a window, standing on legs she did not possess. Sereth heard his teachers assuring him that only he could put the mistake right.

Maren saw Tavin.

The boy sat at the table with a knife and a pencil.

This time, his face was clear.

“You can stay,” he said.

Maren approached. He remembered every freckle. He did not know whether he had recovered a memory or whether the device had assembled the face from what he wanted most.

He reached out.

On the table lay a book that had never been in that kitchen. Grey cloth. A signature beneath an order.

“Tell me something I don’t want to hear,” he asked.

The boy smiled.

“You can stay.”

Maren closed his eyes.

Elira’s voice reached him from far away. She was speaking about the cold stone beneath her hand. About the strap pressing into her ribs. About the smell of smoke.

“Nela is waiting,” she said.

Maren pushed the chair back.

When he opened his eyes, he was still standing in the Archive’s hall.

18. Shattered Crowns

Aldren knelt beside the device.

Blood ran from his nose. He had been unable to hold six people inside six different memories, and the city above them was still bearing down on the network.

Sereth tore the cover from the console.

“Open the channels. Now.”

Naerys cut the first bundle of conduits. Vasheryn cut the second. Roghan wedged his axe into the gearing that was trying to close the ring again.

Elira went to Aldren.

“Get up.”

“If you disconnect me, some of them will lose everything.”

Sereth did not deny it.

Maren looked at the faces in the stone. Among hundreds of strangers, he found Tavin. Or perhaps only an outline he had learned to recognise.

“Can we choose what it takes?” he asked.

“No,” Sereth said.

Maren unfastened the lantern from his belt. He set it beside the exit so the others could see the way.

Then he laid his hands on the ring.

“It came through my memory the first time. Open the same way.”

“I don’t know whether you’ll come back.”

“I know.”

Sereth began turning the crystals.

Elira caught Maren’s arm, but he shook his head. He did not look like someone who wanted to die. He looked like a man holding a door while others were still coming through.

Above them, Roghan cried out. The axe was cracking.

Aldren suddenly sprang up and reached for the main lever. Elira blocked his way.

“I can still save some of them,” he said.

“Help save the ones who are here.”

He looked at her as though, for the first time, he saw her face without memories moving beneath its skin.

Then he stood beside Roghan and held the lever with both hands.

It did not undo anything he had done. It allowed Sereth to finish.

The ring came apart without a crash.

For a moment, the stones hung motionless, separated by seams of golden light. Then a wave of memories swept through the hall. Elira smelled bread her mother had not baked. Vasheryn heard a child laugh. Naerys saw a bridge, whole and empty.

Maren let go of the stone.

The lantern went out.

Roghan caught him before he fell, while Elira pulled Aldren from beneath the breaking gears. Sereth took two crystals. The third crumbled in his hand.

They escaped through the tunnel the naga had opened.

Behind them, the ceiling collapsed.

On the surface, the bells stopped ringing.

For a few moments, no one in the entire city spoke a word.

Epilogue. Oathhaven

Maren woke after three days.

Sella sat beside his bed, mending a cloak. By the window, Nela was peeling an apple with a knife too large for her hand.

He recognised neither of them.

The woman did not stop sewing.

“Your name is Maren,” she said. “You write down names.”

She handed him a book.

Inside was an account of his life. A brief one, because he had not wanted to take up too many pages with himself. Beneath it were additions from Elira, Roghan and others. Not all were flattering.

On the last page was a single name: Tavin.

Maren traced it with his finger for a long time.

Nothing came.

“Who is that?” he asked.

“Your son,” Sella replied.

Nela put down the apple and drew up a chair.

“We can read it to you.”

He let them.

Not everyone recovered their lost memories. Nela remembered the way home now, but had to learn about her first months with Sella through stories. Sometimes she woke certain that she had once lived beside the sea. She had never been to the sea.

Aldren survived. They locked him in an old guard chamber because the prison had burned down. The Order’s physicians continued tending the wounded, but removed the sign of the open hand. Some visited him and asked how much he had known. Others did not want to hear the answer.

Halvek appeared before a council of the living and the undead. All four copies of the documents were read aloud. Maren heard his own signature read out too, with no memory of the hand that had written it. He did not ask for it to be omitted.

Sereth surrendered his notes on the network and the Conclave ring. He remained in the city as a researcher under supervision. His first assignment was to repair an ordinary pump. Keszik made sure he added no crystals.

Roghan departed to face a hearing among his own people. He took letters from the residents, Elira’s testimony and Borun’s name engraved on a tablet. He did not know whether it would be enough. This time, he did not need anyone to assure him of victory.

Vasheryn left six guards at the harbour and an agreement allowing her people to examine the sea conduits. The council argued at length over the word “harbour”, because not everyone wanted to admit that the city now needed a route for beings who did not walk.

They built a ramp.

Naerys returned to the tree in which Elar had died. It did not blossom. It did not speak. Beneath its burned bark, however, she found a green shoot. She did not take it as proof that the druid had returned. She sheltered it from the cold and left it in peace.

Elira was offered command of the entire city.

She accepted responsibility for defending the walls. She gave the warehouse keys to the council.

One morning, she took her mother’s key from her pocket and brought it to the blacksmith.

“Want it altered?” he asked.

For a moment, she hesitated.

“Make a lock to fit it.”

The house she received was small and stood far from the old Linden Street. Its kitchen looked nothing like the drawing. For the first few weeks, it smelled of damp. Then Sella brought a bread starter.

Ashen Haven did not change its name until winter. An oath was read aloud in the square. Its most important sentence was awkward, and for that reason no one wanted it shortened: no resident could be deprived of a home, a name or the right to refuse merely because their past was inconvenient to others.

That was how Oathhaven came to be.

Not everyone accepted its principles. Some left. Others stayed and argued at every council meeting. On the first night, someone painted over the new name on the sign. The following morning, Nela brought paint and restored the letters, two of them crooked.

Maren helped her, reading the name from a piece of paper.

Beneath the new gate, they set a stone bearing an old construction date. It had been salvaged from the Archive’s ruins. It did not glow. At least, not by day.

Far to the south, a young goblin woman bought a lump of black stone threaded with gold from a trader. She meant to use it as a counterweight for a clock.

When she set her chisel against it, she remembered an orchard.

She had never seen an orchard. She had grown up among chimneys and knew apples only from the market.

She put down the tool.

At the other end of the workshop, her brother was repairing a hinge.

“What happened?”

She looked at the stone.

“Someone was here before me.”

“In this workshop? Generations of people.”

“Not here.”

She touched her temple.

Her brother came closer, but this time she drew his hand back before he could touch the find. She wrapped the stone in thick cloth and placed it in an empty box.

On the lid, she wrote: “Do not touch. Ask first.”

Then she opened a notebook.

The first sentence was neither an order nor a prophecy.

It read: “There was an orchard. I would like to know whose.”

The End