The sun, a pale disc in the dust-filled sky, cast long shadows from the ruined towers of Turpin. Once a jewel of the Bayard Kingdom, the city was now a corpse, picked clean by time and scavengers – a monument to the futility of glory.

Elias, moved through the ruins like a ghost, His boots crunched on the mosaic tiles that still clung to the shattered streets, moved through the ruins like a ghost himself. He was a broad-shouldered and lean veteran warrior, built for a world that no longer existed. The tattered remnants of his knight's tabard barely displayed the once-proud crest of the Azure Gryphon beneath layers of grime and blood - most of it not his own, not recently at least. 

His face, etched with harsh lines more from worry than from age. A network of thin scars traced a path across his left cheek, a memento from the day his world ended and the whispers of the Silence first began. He absently scratched at it; it had been itching a lot lately.

His only companion was Kael,perched on a crumbling statue of a forgotten emperor. The bird cocked its head, obsidian eyes gleaming with an unsettling knowingness, as Kael knelt beside a collapsed wall, prying loose a section of intricately carved stonework. 

"Anything for us today, old friend?" Elias muttered, his voice rough from disuse. He grunted with effort as the stone came free, revealing a hollow space behind it.

Elias hopped from the statue to Kael’'s shoulder, letting out a series of guttural croaks. It was always hard to decipher what the bird meant, but Kael had learned to listen.

Inside the hollow, nestled among the dust and debris, was a small, tarnished silver locket. It was shaped like a teardrop, its surface etched with a delicate pattern of interwoven vines, one of which had a single, perfect, obsidian gem embedded within it. The metal was cold and heavy in his hand.

"Hmm," Eliasl said, turning the locket over in his calloused fingers, "Someone did not want to part with this." It was more than just pretty. It was a clue, a breadcrumb. Something a cut above his usual haul of scrap metal and cracked pottery. He held it up for the raven to see.

"What do you think, Kael? Think it will fetch a few silvers?"

Kael pecked at the locket, his beak making a sharp clicking sound against the metal. He then hopped to the ground, pecking at the base of the fallen stone.

Elias frowned. "What is it?" He followed, running a hand over the surface where the raven was pecking.

He felt it then, a faint indentation, barely visible beneath the grime. He pulled out a small brush from his pack and carefully swept away the dust, revealing a small, almost invisible symbol etched into the stone. It was a circle, bisected by a wavy line, that looked oddly familiar.

A jolt, like a physical blow, struck Elias's memory. He staggered back, clutching his head. A cacophony of screams, the clash of steel, the chilling silence that followed… the symbol. He had seen that symbol before, in the heat of the battle, on the banners of… whom? The memory slipped away like smoke, leaving behind only the lingering stench of fear and the bitter taste of betrayal.

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He knelt there for a long moment, the locket cold and heavy in his hand. The sun dipped lower in the sky, painting the ruins in hues of blood orange and bruised purple. The wind, a mournful sigh through the shattered windows of empty homes, carried with it the dust of ages, the whispers of the dead.

 He looked at the locket again, a feeling of dread pooling in his stomach. He knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that this was no ordinary trinket. This was a piece of the past, a past he had tried so desperately to bury.Kael let out a low, mournful croak, as if echoing Elias's own troubled thoughts.

Elias looked up, into the deepening gloom, and took a long, ragged breath. He tucked the locket safely away in his belt pouch. "Come, old friend," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "Let's see if we can find something to eat. Then we have work to do." 

The walk back to his makeshift camp was longer than usual. Every shadow seemed to reach for him, every whisper of wind carried echoes of memories he'd rather forget. The locket's weight against his hip felt like an anchor, dragging him down into depths he'd spent years avoiding.

His camp was little more than a hollow carved into the ruins of what had once been a merchant's villa. The walls still bore faded frescoes depicting scenes of revelry and commerce – mockeries now of the desolation that surrounded them. Elias had chosen it for its defensibility: one way in, multiple ways out, and high ground that gave him a clear view of the approaching streets.

As he settled in for the night, Kael took up his usual perch on a broken beam above. Elias pulled out the locket again, studying it in the flickering light of his small fire. The obsidian gem seemed to drink in the flames, reflecting nothing back. He tried to open it, but the mechanism was stuck, either from age or design.

"What secrets do you hold?" he murmured, tracing the vine patterns with his thumb. As he did so, the scar on his cheek began to burn, a sharp, insistent pain that made him wince. The whispers of the Silence grew louder in his head, no longer the usual background hiss but something more focused, more urgent.

*Knights fall, brothers rise, the Silence comes...*

The words came unbidden to his mind, a fragment of a battle cry or maybe a prayer, he couldn't remember which. But he remembered the day he'd first heard them, when the sky had turned the color of beaten copper and the streets of the capital had run red with—

A sharp caw from Kael snapped him back to the present. The bird was staring intently at the camp's entrance, feathers puffed up in alarm. Eliasl's hand went instinctively to the hilt of his sword, worn but still deadly after all these years.

Footsteps. Light, careful, but not careful enough. The scrape of leather on stone, the subtle shift of disturbed rubble. Someone was trying very hard to be quiet, and nearly succeeding.

Elias doused his fire with a handful of sand and moved to the shadows, his movements practiced and silent. Elias remained still, a darker shadow against the night sky, watching.

The footsteps grew closer. One set? No, two. Then three. They were coordinating, trying to box him in. Amateurs. If they were proper soldiers, they would have—

"Come out, Knight of the Azure Gryphon," a voice called, soft but carrying. Female, with an accent he couldn't quite place. "We know you have the Tears of Silence. We've been tracking you since you found it."

Elias' breath caught in his throat. The Tears of Silence. He hadn't heard that name in... how long? The locket seemed to pulse against his hip, and the scar on his face burned fiercer than ever.

"I think," he called back, his voice steady despite the chaos in his mind, "you had better explain yourselves. And quickly." His sword whispered from its scabbard, the steel catching what little moonlight filtered through the broken roof.

A laugh, genuine but tired. "Oh, we will. But first, you need to decide: are you still a knight who keeps his oaths? Or just another scavenger picking through the bones of the old world?"

The question struck him like a physical blow. In the darkness above, Kael shifted uneasily, awaiting his decision. And in the depths of his mind, the whispers of the Silence grew louder still, promising answers to questions he'd been afraid to ask for far too long.