Aetherion Academia #1: Shadows of Rebirth
I stood in the ash of seven erased lives with the diary pressing against my ribs and the contract scar burning against my wrist and the weight of knowledge that someone had tried very hard to destroy pressing against my shoulders like wet earth.
"We are not the first to investigate," Zephina said, and her shadow-born eyes tracked patterns in the ash that the rest of us could not see. "Others have come. Others have found what we found. The shadows remember their footsteps, their fear, their silence after they left."
"And?" I asked.
"They were silenced," Zephina replied. "Or they silenced themselves. The shadows do not remember them leaving. Only arriving. Only stopping. Only becoming part of