The gauntlet's faint glow mirrored the rhythm of Lira's heartbeat as she stood at the edge of the Dead Plains. The survivors had begun calling it Alex's Light—a small defiance against the void-stained horizon. But the light was weakening. Each dusk, its golden flicker dimmed, as if mourning the boy who once wore it.
"It's dying," Yara said, her voice stripped of its usual steel. She knelt beside Lira, her fingers brushing the gauntlet's cold surface. "Whatever's left of him… it's fading."
Lira tightened her grip. "Then we give it a reason to stay."
The star burned brighter each night—a pinprick of gold in the northern sky. Survivors whispered it was Alex's soul, fleeing the cycle. But Lira saw the truth in Mara's journals: stars were born of cataclysm, not hope.
She gathered provisions in silence—a water skin, the Eclipse Shard fragments, and the gauntlet, now strapped to her forearm with fraying leather. Yara cornered her at the Sanctum gates. "You're leaving."
"The star isn't him," Lira said. "But it's a thread. I'm pulling it."
Yara thrust a dagger into her hand—the one Alex had used to gut the voidling. "Then make it mean something."
The Dead Plains had begun to breathe. Pale lichen clung to glass shards, and sulfur pools bubbled where the titan's blood had seeped. Lira marked her path with knife-carved runes, the gauntlet's dim pulse her only compass.
On the third day, she found the crater.
At its center stood a spire of fused void glass and sunsteel, jagged as a broken promise. The star's light pooled at its peak, and beneath it—movement. Figures robed in tattered gold scrabbled in the dirt, their chants harmonizing with the gauntlet's dying hum.
Heir's disciples.
Lira crouched, dagger ready. But the figures weren't praying—they were digging.
"The child of embers lives," croaked the eldest disciple, his face a latticework of scars. He held up a shard of void glass, its surface reflecting the star's light. "The heir's bond was a chain, but the First Flame's spark… it adapts."
Lira stepped into the light. "You're harvesting the star."
The disciples froze. The elder smiled, teeth blackened. "We're communing. The heir's death left a vacuum. The Flame seeks a new vessel." His gaze dropped to the gauntlet. "You feel it, don't you? The pull."
The Eclipse Shard fragments burned in Lira's pocket. She lunged.
The fight was brutal, desperate. Disciples fought with deranged fervor, their blood sizzling where it struck the gauntlet. Lira's dagger found throats, hearts, but the elder dodged every strike, his laughter echoing.
"You don't understand!" he screamed, clutching the void shard. "The Flame doesn't want him back—it wants you!"
The shard pulsed. The gauntlet flared, searing Lira's arm. Visions assaulted her: the First Sanctum's core, the Eclipse Shard's creation, Alex's smile—not a memory, but a plea.
"Let go," his voice whispered. "Or you'll burn too."
The elder struck.
Lira fell, the disciple's blade buried in her side. The gauntlet's light surged, flooding her veins with fire. She gasped—not in pain, but recognition. The Flame's voice was hers now, a roar beneath her ribs.
Finish it.
She tore the dagger free and plunged it into the elder's chest. His shard shattered, its light merging with the gauntlet. The remaining disciples fled as the spire trembled, cracks racing toward the star.
Lira crawled to the spire's base. The Eclipse Shard fragments glowed, drawn to a crevice where Alex's face shimmered in the glass—a phantom, not a memory.
"You're here," she breathed.
"Not anymore." His voice was distant, fractured. "The star… it's a trap. The Flame wants a clean slate. Don't let it—"
The vision shattered. The spire collapsed.
Lira woke to a new sky.
The star was gone, replaced by a scar of molten gold. The gauntlet's light had stabilized, its pulse steady, relentless. At her feet lay the elder's shard—now clear, reflecting nothing.
She pressed it to the gauntlet. The light intensified, carving a single word into her arm: Nameless.
The Flame had chosen.
The survivors barely recognized her. The gauntlet's light had etched itself into Lira's skin, veins glowing gold. Yara met her at the gates. "What happened?"
Lira raised her arm. The word Nameless pulsed. "The cycle's broken. But the Flame… it's hungry."
In the north, the sky's scar deepened. Something stirred within it—not void, not Flame, but a shadow wearing Lira's face.