The ruins twisted in ways that defied reason.
Ilira had spent her life mapping lost places, but this - this was something else. Structures blurred, edges melting into the horizon like half-formed memories. It was as if the land itself struggled to exist.
She ran her fingers over the living ink, watching as it reshaped again. Letters bled into the parchment, shifting, rearranging - until suddenly, it held something new.
One word.
A name.
Orelith.
Vaedin exhaled sharply. "That's it. The erased civilization."
But the name - it felt hollow. It was familiar, yet utterly unrecognizable, as if it had been spoken before but never truly understood.
Sivrin tensed beside her, eyes narrowing at the flickering ruins. "Feels wrong, doesn't it? Like it's been sitting just outside memory."
The Hollow Star whispered once more, and this time, it did not speak in warnings.
It sighed, as if the weight of remembering was too much to bear.
Then the ruins shifted, revealing something deeper beneath the layers of forgotten stone - a figure, standing at the edge of oblivion.
Not an ordinary being.
Not something alive.
A living echo.
Vaedin stepped back, his voice barely above a whisper. "They weren't erased. They were transformed."
Ilira gripped the parchment tighter. The ink bled again, shifting - not mapping a destination, but unraveling a truth hidden beneath centuries of silence.
Orelith was not merely forgotten.
Its people had chosen to erase themselves.