Night draped the Rootmother's grove in silence, stars flickering like whispers overhead. Kael sat at the edge of a still pool, staring at his reflection.
His eyes—once a molten orange—were now laced with black flame threads, curling in the iris like ink in water.
The mark of Pyronox.
Ysera approached, barefoot and silent as moonlight.
"You haven't spoken since you woke."
Kael's voice came low.
"I brought part of him back."
He opened his hand. Emberclaw rested in his palm—but its flame was now half-gold, half-void.
"He left something inside me. I don't know what it is… but it's alive. And it's waiting."
Ysera knelt beside him.
"You're not alone in this. We'll cleanse it."
Kael looked at her.
"You don't cleanse a legacy, Ysera. You inherit it."
Later, they sat in the Groveheart, where the Rootmother's glowing tree rose into the stars. Elder druids chanted softly in the distance, tending to the wards.
There, Veylan approached with a sealed scroll—its wax crest broken, the symbol of the Flame Court scorched at the corner.
"This was delivered by windhawk. Stamped with the royal sigil. But it's old—decades old."
Kael opened it. Inside was a message written in Sol'Vareth's hand.
It was addressed to Kael… long before he was born.
"To the one who awakens Pyronox…"
"…you must know this was never about crowns or blood. The fire was never ours. It was a leash."
"If you are reading this, you carry it now. And you must find what I buried in the Black Ash Valley."
"There lies the truth of our line. And the only flame Pyronox fears."
Ysera leaned over the letter.
"The Black Ash Valley is dead land. No one goes there. It's cursed."
Kael stood, his voice steady.
"Then that's where we start."
Far to the north, across mountains and silence, Avalyne stepped onto a path of glass and bone—her body wrapped in smoke-threaded armor.
The shadow figure walked beside her, finally lowering their hood.
Their face was Kael's, only older.
Worn. Scarred.
"You're not just his reflection," Avalyne said. "You're his… what?"
He smiled.
"His first future. The one Sol'Vareth erased."
"But I survived the erasure. I survived the fire."
"And now?" she asked.
"Now," the shadow-Kael said, "we make sure this Kael either becomes what he must… or burns the world trying."
The sun had not touched the Black Ash Valley in over four hundred years.
Once fertile and bright, it had been turned into a land of perpetual dusk, its soil burned by gods and its sky held hostage by a storm that never wept. Trees stood like charred skeletons. Rivers moved, but with smoke instead of water.
Kael stood at the valley's edge.
Behind him, Ysera and Veylan prepared their wards.
Ahead, the earth remembered betrayal.
"This is where Sol'Vareth buried it," Kael said, "whatever Pyronox fears."
Ysera tightened her cloak.
"It's not just cursed—it's veiled. I can't see beyond the first ridge. Even the wind won't speak here."
Veylan drew his blades, their edges humming softly.
"Then we move like ghosts."
As they descended into the valley, the world shifted.
Footsteps made no sound. Time slowed, or tried to, as if the valley fought to trap them in memory.
Kael's fire dimmed to a flicker. Emberclaw pulsed once, then fell eerily quiet.
Then he heard it—
A voice. His voice.
"You're not ready. Turn back."
He spun, but no one was there.
"He's already inside me," Kael murmured.
Ysera nodded.
"This place is a mirror. It shows you the fire you fear."
They walked until they found it: a ruin of obsidian towers sunk into cracked ground.
Kael approached the largest spire, half-buried in black sand. At its base, a massive circle of chained flame pulsed beneath the surface like a buried heart.
In its center: a single sealed vault etched with the royal sigil—split in two.
He stepped forward. The flame chains recoiled at his presence.
And then, a surge of heat—not from Pyronox.
From something older.
Something holy.
"This isn't Pyronox's prison," Ysera whispered. "It's his opposite."
Kael knelt and touched the vault.
It opened like breath.
Inside lay a sword. Unlit. Cold. Beautiful. Forged from sunmetal and root-crystal, with vines carved around its hilt and a name on the blade:
Solmourne.
"The Last Flame," Kael whispered.
The moment he touched it, his fire changed.
Pyronox roared inside him—angry, retreating.
Ysera gasped. "He's scared."
Kael stood. In one hand, Emberclaw. In the other, Solmourne.
Two legacies.
Two fires.
And one soul caught between them.
"Let him come," Kael said. "I'll burn brighter than both."
High above, shadow-Kael watched from the cliffs beside Avalyne.
"He's found it," she said.
"Good," shadow-Kael replied. "Now we see which fire he chooses… when they start to consume each other."
The winds of Black Ash Valley had stilled.
Kael stood at the eye of silence, Solmourne in his left hand, Emberclaw in his right. One blade pulsed with radiant restraint—light wrapped in purpose. The other hissed with wild hunger, a flame too proud to kneel.
And deep within Kael's chest, the two fires began to fight.
"Kael—drop one," Ysera warned. "No one can wield both. Not without—"
Kael's knees buckled. His vision fractured. Time cracked around him like glass.
Inside his mind:
Two thrones.
Two kings.
And Kael, bound between them.
The Throne of Cinders: Pyronox, draped in a mantle of devouring flame, eyes like supernovae.
"You were born of me. You burned before you breathed. Let the world kneel. Let it fear."
The Throne of Light: Sol'Vareth, regal even in memory, his hand on Solmourne's hilt.
"You were forged to end what I could not. But power without soul is ruin."
Kael stood between them.
His bones screamed.
His fire cracked like lightning inside his skin.
"I am not your vessel!" he roared. "I am not your echo!"
In the physical realm, Kael levitated—his body wrapped in spiraling arcs of opposing flame. Ysera chanted protective wards, sweat pouring down her brow.
Veylan stepped forward, blades raised.
"If we don't stop this, he'll tear himself apart!"
Ysera's eyes blazed with fury.
"You touch him, and I tear you apart."
Back in the soul-realm, Kael took a step forward.
Solmourne pulsed in his hand—offering stillness, control.
Emberclaw shrieked in his other—demanding chaos, freedom.
Kael opened both palms.
"Then burn together," he whispered.
And he slammed the blades together.
The explosion shattered the inner plane.
In the real world, light and flame erupted from Kael, sending both Ysera and Veylan flying. Trees bent away. The soil cracked. The air screamed.
And then—silence.
Kael stood.
Both blades were gone.
In their place: a single weapon forged of dusklight and stormfire. Not bound to past gods.
Forged by his will alone.
Its name carved itself into the steel as it cooled:
Ashreign.
Ysera stumbled to her feet.
"Kael?"
He turned. His eyes—no longer flickering with Pyronox's corruption or Sol'Vareth's burden—were entirely his own.
"I chose neither," he said. "I am not their heir. I am the breaker of thrones."
Far away, in the Flame Court, a hundred seers collapsed in unison.
The firelines were rewritten.
The prophecies—torn open.
And the elders of flame knew only one thing:
The true war had just begun.
High above the Searing Pinnacle, the Flame Court convened beneath a crimson sky that wept no rain.
Twelve thrones of obsidian ringed a burning pit—the Pyraxis Well, where the ancestors' flames whispered truths. Today, the fire was silent.
Too silent.
Archflame Tharion slammed his molten scepter against the stone floor. Sparks flew like vipers.
"He wields Ashreign," he growled. "The boy has merged Solmourne and Emberclaw. That should be impossible."
From her throne of bone-ash and rubies, Lady Vaestra, Matron of the Ember Veil, folded her pale fingers.
"He has defied prophecy. Burned destiny to forge his own. That makes him not a king…"
She leaned forward, voice soft as silk—
"…but a godkiller."
Across the chamber, the youngest member, Flameborn Serith, trembled.
"We should bow to him. He's broken the gods' bindings. Perhaps he is the Flame Returned—"
"Silence!" Tharion thundered.
"You would kneel before a bastard heir raised by dirtwalkers?"
He turned to the seers' gallery, where cloaked figures writhed in pain, their minds still cracked from Kael's awakening.
"What do the flames whisper now?"
One seer lifted her charred face. Her lips bled as she spoke.
"They do not whisper.
They scream."
"Ashreign is unwritten.
He walks outside the tether.
He is the answer to a question no god dared ask."
"And the only one who can stand against him…"
She gasped, her eyes rolling white.
"…is the Red Tyrant. The exiled one. The Scorched Crown."
A hush fell.
Vaestra stood, her ruby robes dragging like fire trails.
"Then summon him."
Tharion's eyes widened.
"He was banished. We cast him into the Iron Star. If he returns—"
"If he returns," she interrupted, "then he does so not as a prince… but as our last sword."
"Summon Lord Draeven. Let the Tyrant of Ashfall rise again."
Far away, in the Iron Star Prison orbiting the sun's edge, chains of solar flame began to tremble.
Inside, a figure opened his eyes.
Red.
Cruel.
Hungry.
He smiled.
"Finally," he whispered.
"Let me meet the fool who dares hold Ashreign."
Storms no longer obeyed the sky.
Kael walked through the smoldering forest at the edge of the Black Ash Valley, Ashreign slung across his back. With every step, the world adjusted—winds curved around him, shadows watched and waited, and time hesitated, as if uncertain what he now was.
Ysera moved beside him, her eyes always flicking toward the blade.
"That sword… it's not just fire or light. It listens."
Kael nodded.
"It feels like a heartbeat. A question always being asked."
Veylan followed behind, silent, until he muttered,
"I don't like it. Blades shouldn't breathe."
Kael stopped.
The air around them shimmered.
And Ashreign pulsed.
Suddenly, the trees bent back—no wind, no motion—just recoil. The earth cracked beneath Kael's feet. The sun dimmed.
From the cracks emerged twisted creatures—Fumereks, flame-drunk beasts of the valley, drawn to anything bright.
Four. Then ten. Then a swarm.
"They're not hunting us," Ysera breathed. "They're worshipping the sword."
The creatures bowed—backs breaking, claws digging into ash—as they howled a single word in the old tongue:
"Ashai'nor."
"What does it mean?" Kael asked.
Ysera answered, cold.
"Endflame."
Ashreign whispered. Kael drew it, and the world bent.
The blade wasn't hot—it was true.
He swung once.
The horizon caught fire.
The valley was silent again.
The Fumereks were gone—not burned, not banished—simply erased. Not even ash remained.
Ysera grabbed Kael's arm, fear flickering behind her calm.
"That sword didn't just kill them. It denied them. Like they never belonged in this world."
Ashreign hissed in Kael's hand.
He looked to the sky.
"It's waking up."
Somewhere across the world, the sky bled red.
In the deepest forge beneath the Iron Star, Lord Draeven stepped free from his broken cell.
He stared at the solar chains lying in ruins.
"A new blade dares roar," he whispered.
"Then let it meet a true tyrant's silence."