Absencic

Alex has had the same nightmare since he can remember: a dungeon, a battle, two figures fighting something that should not exist. It ends the same way every time. He is fifteen when he descends into that dungeon for real. What he finds at the bottom is not what the church was looking for: a library no map records, an elf who has been waiting in silence for longer than anyone alive can account for, and a necklace left in the ruins when she vanishes. The necklace is warm. It has been warm since the moment he picked it up. Now he is on the road south; wanted by the very church that preaches empathy, travelling with a beastkin girl he freed from a cage and a young woman whose father's name she has forsaken. The crossing between continents costs more than he has. The sea route is fatal and the mountain passes run through True Dragon territory. There is someone buried at his destination. The church took her body after they ransacked the library. She asked him to come back, once, a long time ago, in a language he was too young to understand.