The pull toward the Field of Broken Banners wavers when I reach Haven's outer perimeter.

Something else draws my attention, something I have not seen since bringing Merik's bones home.

The Memorial Wall.

Stone rises against outer walls, not additional protection against monsters, but preservation of memory. Names cover every inch of worked granite, carved by recent hands that were finally able to mark their passing.

I approach slowly. My claws leave no marks on hardened earth.

The wall tells Haven's story. Here, a cluster of names from the same family, all carved within days, a bloodline ended by shadow hounds. There, ranks and titles preserved alongside common names, death rendering all equal.

Some sections show careful planning, names arranged in neat rows. Others sprawl chaotically, carved in haste after devastating attacks.

Movement catches my attention. A figure kneels before recently carved stone, one hand pressed against granite.

Hair kept short, practical. Guard uniform modified for a smaller frame.

A bow rests beside her, well-maintained despite obvious wear.

Emmy.

She's grown since our last meeting. No longer the child who walked beside clicking bones without fear. Now she stands, or kneels, among Haven's defenders.

An archer on the walls, she has grown further into the role.

I halt thirty paces away. Close enough to see, far enough not to intrude on grief.

Her fingers touch against the carved stone.

MERIK

Fresh flowers lie at the wall's base.

Not that long ago, nothing grew at all. The corruption beneath Haven's foundations poisoned everything, brittle grass and withered trees. Haven existed in a circle of barren earth, life itself recoiling from the demon's buried heart.

I destroyed that corruption and watched light return to Haven's stones. But life grows slowly, cautiously, after such violation.

A few green shoots appeared the following spring. Some hardy grass the year after. Nothing more than that.

Yet here lie flowers. Pale roses.

She must have traveled far to gather them. Beyond corruption's former reach, into dangerous lands where monsters roam and flowers still bloom.

For him.

I wait. Grief deserves its space, its time. The Legion stands far behind me, moving into place, understanding without words that this moment belongs to the living.

Emmy speaks to the stone, words too quiet to reach me. Her shoulders shake once, briefly, before straightening.

A soldier's discipline learned young.

She rises and turns.

Blue-white light meets her gaze across thirty paces. Recognition flickers immediately.

No fear, no revulsion at my transformed state. The same acceptance she showed as a child.

"You came back."

Her voice carries clearly in the morning stillness. Steady, certain. She approaches without hesitation, past dragon bones and wolf claws, until she stands within arm's reach.

"I told them you would."

The flowers in her hand tremble slightly. Not from fear, but from something deeper.

Relief, perhaps. Or validation of faith maintained when others doubted.

"You're different since you left. Something's changed."

Perceptive. The divine forging shows, perhaps. Or the fragments speaking through me leave traces she recognizes.

"I found answers in the deep places. Some questions too."

A smile touches her lips. Small but genuine.

"Still collecting pieces of the dead?"

"Always. Each fragment carries memory. Purpose. Sometimes wisdom."

We stand in comfortable silence. The memorial wall looms behind her, thousands of names watching our conversation.

Each one a story ended, a duty completed. Haven's true foundation, not stone and mortar but memory and sacrifice.

"Three days," Emmy says eventually. "The whole fortress knows. The Drowned Kingdom invades."

"You heard."

"Walls have ears. Especially when guards gossip." She adjusts her bow strap. "You'll leave after. Hunt the bigger threats."

Not a question.

"Yes."

"Alone?"

"The Legion remains. Haven needs defenders more than I need an army."

She nods slowly.

"I'll watch for your return. However long it takes."

Faith, again. Unshakeable certainty that I'll complete the hunt and come back. That purpose will drive me through whatever darkness waits beyond Haven's walls.

"May I?" she asks suddenly, extending her hand toward my arm.

I nod. She touches my forearm, fingers gentle against spectral tissue and bone.

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No fear in the contact. No revulsion.

"I got older," she says softly. "Almost four years now since you first carried me from Joist's ruins."

Her hand withdraws, but the warmth of contact lingers. Strange sensation for dead bones to register.

"Tell me something," Emmy continues, eyes serious. "When you're made of so many pieces, so many different people's bones, who decides what you do? Is it the loudest voice? Does someone vote?"

The question cuts deeper than she knows. Or perhaps she knows exactly how deep it cuts.

"At first, the voices moved as one. United in purpose. Legion condensed into singular form." I pause, searching for words to explain the inexplicable. "But experience creates distinction. Each choice made becomes a boundary. A definition."

"So there's a them, but also a you?"

"Yes. And the I grows stronger."

She tilts her head, processing this.

"Then who are you? If you're not some soldier, not the dragon, not the wolf, not any single fragment, who is the I?"

I stand silent. The answer exists somewhere between mortal understanding and divine mystery.

How to explain being the echo of a dead god's miracle? Purpose given form, shaped by borrowed memories but no longer slave to them?

"I am what chooses," I finally respond. "What decides. The will that guides the fragments rather than being guided by them."

Emmy kicks at a loose stone, sending it skittering across frozen ground.

"That sounds lonely."

Truth in that. To be composite yet singular.

To carry thousands of memories yet own none of them. To be born from unity but grown into isolation.

"Here's a harder question," Emmy says. "If you could give it up, all of it, the borrowed bones, the duty, the endless fighting, would you? Could you just stop?"

The question hangs between us like morning mist. Within me, fragments stir.

The dragon wants glory. The wolf craves hunt. Soldier bones speak of duty.

But beneath them all, the I considers.

"I am miracle made manifest," I tell her. "The final prayer of a dying god given form. To choose rest would be to unmake that prayer. To render sacrifice meaningless."

"That's not what I asked." Her archer's eyes stay fixed on mine. "I asked if you could. If you would. Not whether you should."

Clever child. No, clever young woman. She learned to see past surface truths.

"I don't know." The admission feels strange. "The compulsion runs deeper than bone. Perhaps I could resist it. Perhaps the I has grown strong enough. But without purpose, what remains? What is will without direction?"

"Maybe that's the point," Emmy suggests. "Maybe real choice means being able to exist without purpose. Just being."

She gestures at the memorial wall behind us.

"All these names. They had purposes. Guard duty, farming, raising children, defending walls. But they also had moments between purposes. Quiet times when they just existed. Watched sunsets. Shared meals. Told stories." She looks back at me. "Do you have those moments? Can you?"

I consider. Between battles, between goals, what fills the space?

Movement toward the next objective. Planning future hunts.

Always forward, always purposed.

"I stand watch. I observe. I remember."

"But do you ever just be?"

The question has no answer. Cannot have an answer. To be without purpose is foreign to my nature as flight to stone.

Yet the question itself creates space. A pause between purposes. A moment of just existing while considering existence.

Is this what she means?

"You're doing it now," Emmy observes, smile touching her lips. "Thinking without planning. Existing without acting. Being you instead of being your purpose."

Perhaps the young woman understands more than expected.

The bell from Haven's wall tolls, not the alarm, but a marker of time passing. Emmy glances toward it, a fleeting shadow crossing her face.

Her gaze returns to me, curiosity giving way to a sharper, more focused intensity. This moment of shared quiet, of probing my nature, seems to have opened a door for a question that has weighed.

"This new voice you have," she begins, "it allows for clearer answers. More direct."

I wait.

I see the question building in her eyes before she speaks.

"You knew."

The flowers lower to her side. Her grip tightens around the stems.

"When you returned. You knew what happened to him."

Words form in dust at my feet. Careful, measured.

Yes.

"Where?" The archer's steadiness cracks slightly. "Where did you find him?"

The wolf bones within my frame remember. Teeth tearing flesh.

The taste of fear and desperation. A father's final stand against creatures that wore human faces by day and hunted by moonlight.

I say nothing.

"Tell me." Her voice carries the authority she's earned on Haven's walls. "I have a right to know."

"Found his remains," I say. "Brought him back for burial."

The half-truth burns in ways I cannot feel. Merik chose rest when offered resurrection.

But the manner of his death.

"Where?" She steps closer. "What killed him?"

My claws pause above the dust. The alpha's memories surface unbidden. Merik struggling, screaming until claws found his throat.

The same claws that now extend from my transformed limbs.

Then, the larder.

"Monsters," I say. "Far beyond Haven."

"What kind of monsters?"

I hesitate.

The question hangs between us.

What kind of monsters? The kind that wear familiar faces.

The kind that maintain villages as feeding grounds, luring travelers with false safety. The kind whose claws I now carry within my frame.

The kind I became.

Emmy waits, studying my silence.

She reads hesitation in my stillness, recognizes evasion.

"You don't want to tell me."

"Some knowledge brings no peace," is all I say.

"I'm not a child anymore." Her voice sharpens. "I've seen what comes from the dark. I can handle the truth."

The balverine memories stir. Merik's final moments, error, pain, the desperate struggle of a father trying to return home.

How do I explain that his killer's bones now strengthen my frame? That I carry fragments of the very monsters that devoured him?

Some truths serve no purpose except to wound.

"He fought bravely. He thought of you. That matters more than the rest."

Emmy's grip tightens around the flowers, petals trembling.

The bones remember his courage. How he fought even when hope failed. The wolf alpha respecting his determination even as it fed.

Those bones became mine, the alpha and her kin. But it came with the memory of every kill, every hunt, every moment of terror their victims experienced.

Including his.

"It doesn't matter. He died as he lived. Selflessly."

"It matters to me." Her bow shifts in her grip. "He was my father."

The flowers drop from her hand. Pale petals scatter across dark earth.

"You're lying."

Not accusation. Statement of fact. She reads the hesitation in my stillness, the careful gaps in my responses.

"Something happened that you won't tell me. Something about how he died."

The flowers lower to her side. Her grip tightens around the stems.

"Where?" The archer's steadiness cracks slightly. "Where did you find him? What truly happened out there?"

The wolf bones within my frame, the very fragments of the balverine alpha and its kin who took Merik's life, remain utterly, unnaturally still. They offer no instinct, no memory, no urge.

A void where predatory thought should be.

I retreat into the hollow space, the council chamber of my being. The question is not just for me, it is for all of us who now form this I.

The familiar non-space unfolds. Commander Cid Ikert's essence forms first, stern, resolute. "The girl is a soldier of Haven. She has faced loss. But this truth carries a greater poison."

"She seeks knowledge of her father's end, not a revelation that shatters her perception of her guardian," he adds, his spectral form rigid with concern.

The Dragon bones coalesce, scales shimmering with cold light. "Truth is a fire. Some are forged by it, others consumed. Her lineage shows strength. Perhaps she can bear it."

"But what purpose does her bearing it serve?" the dragon continues. "The balverines are ended. His death is avenged by your hand, by your very frame. Is that not sufficient?"

Carida's gentler presence follows. "She asks from love, from grief. To lie, or to withhold too much, breaks the trust she so freely gives. That trust is a shield for Haven as strong as any wall."

"But the full nature of your integration of those parts, perhaps that is a burden too great for her, or any living soul, to carry concerning their kin," Carida finishes, her light dimming slightly.

A murmur rises from the Soldier fragments. One, older, his spectral armor bearing the scars of a hundred forgotten skirmishes, steps forth.

"We've all delivered hard news, Commander," his essence addresses Ikert. "Sometimes the how matters less than the that. He died. He fought. He is remembered. Is that not the core of it?"

"The rest is for the dead to carry," he concludes firmly.

Another soldier, younger, his form still flickering with the phantom pain of his own end, speaks. "But secrets fester. A half-truth can wound more deeply than a clean blade."

Only the wolf bones remain silent.

They know what they've done.

Some truths serve no purpose.

She looks me over, these bones, this form, more than spectral flesh, she sees for first time bone horror.

The wolf bones pulse within my frame. Memories of her father's blood, his final breath, the taste of terror and desperate love.

The flowers lie abandoned between us.

She walks away without looking back.

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