The sky above the eastern continent fractured like stained glass, casting shards of red across the dawn.
In the sacred city of Aurendor, priests fell to their knees as the sun pulsed twice—a ripple across flame-lines the gods themselves had once drawn.
It meant only one thing:
Lord Draeven had returned.
Far above the earth, the Iron Star drifted—its ancient prison cracked open like a hatching egg. Within its molten trail, a single figure soared downward, wrapped in a cloak of scorched space and forged hate.
Lord Draeven.
The Scorched Crown.
The Tyrant of Ashfall.
He descended like a comet, landing in the heart of the Desolate Marches, where fire never died and time dared not walk.
The sand turned to glass beneath his boots.
He looked to the south.
"Ashreign..." he murmured. "The gods begged me not to forge it. I obeyed."
He stretched out one hand, and the world darkened.
"But if a boy has done what I would not—then I will do what I must."
At that moment, miles away, Kael stirred in his sleep.
He was dreaming—not of fire, not of gods, but of chains.
Not his.
Ashreign's.
In the dream, he stood in a cathedral of light and shadow, surrounded by thrones of flame, each one empty. The sword floated before him, whispering in a dozen tongues.
One voice stood out.
A deep, royal tone. Familiar. Angry.
"He's coming for you."
Kael turned.
The cathedral vanished, replaced by a battlefield—burning, broken, scarred by two figures:
One was Kael, holding Ashreign, glowing with destiny.
The other was Draeven, wrapped in duskfire, face unreadable, eyes like obsidian mirrors.
When Kael woke, he was already sweating.
"He's near," he whispered.
Ysera looked at him, tense.
"You saw him?"
Kael nodded.
"No... I felt him."
"Draeven's not just a tyrant," he said.
"He's a warning made flesh."
Back in the Marches, Draeven raised his arms.
The Ashcallers, his old army—banished centuries ago—began to rise from the glass sands, reborn in silence.
He looked toward the west.
"Ashreign belongs to me."
"And I will take it—by fire, by blood, or by breaking the world."
Kael sat cross-legged atop the basalt ridge of Emberfall. Wind howled around him, scattering embers from dying trees. Ashreign lay across his lap, pulsing with quiet heat—like a dragon breathing beneath the surface of steel.
Ysera stood nearby, arms folded, her robes scorched from the last encounter.
"He's coming. The Flame Lines are reacting. Draeven's power is ancient—woven into the bones of the world. You can't just meet that head-on."
Kael didn't look up.
"I'm not planning to."
He exhaled, slow and deep.
"I'm listening."
Within Ashreign, Kael had discovered a labyrinth—a burning map of the world, stitched together by fire, memory, and will. Each swing carved not just space, but possibility.
And now, the blade showed him paths:
A desert soaked in glass and war.
A city of mirrors, ruled by a blind king.
A sky fortress floating on the last breath of a dying god.
But only one path was bathed in black fire.
Draeven's trail.
"He's not hiding," Kael said. "He wants me to follow."
Veylan approached from behind, his blade drawn.
"Then we do what he expects—and we don't do it alone."
He dropped a satchel at Kael's feet. Inside: three bound glyphstones, each one humming with unstable power.
"Soulmarks from the Order of Drowning Flame. Illegal in every kingdom. But they'll sting, even him."
Kael looked at the stones.
Then at Ashreign.
Then at the sky, where clouds now spiraled inward—as if the heavens themselves were bracing for something inevitable.
"No more running."
He stood.
Ashreign hummed louder.
"If Draeven wants war," he said, "then we bring it to his door."
That night, the sky cracked.
Draeven's first strike had come—not to Kael, but to the world.
The Moon Bastion—capital of the floating sky kingdom—was struck by a lance of pure obsidian flame. Entire battalions were vaporized. The kingdom fell in silence, drifting into ruin like a dying star.
All across the continent, one message burned itself into the air:
Return the Blade.
Or Watch the World Burn.
Beneath the molten roots of the Worldheart Tree—deep in the Hollow Below—an ancient chamber awakened for the first time in a thousand years.
Seven thrones stood within, carved from elements no longer known to man: Sunbone, Dreadglass, Hollowroot, Skybrass… And at their center, the Eclipsed Seat, always left empty, always feared.
Now, six thrones were filled.
One remained void.
The Council of Flame, bound by the oldest oath—older than kings, older than fire—had reconvened.
The first to speak was High Watcher Remeon, whose eyes bore twin suns.
"Draeven has broken the Iron Star. The tyrant walks again. He struck down the Moon Bastion in a single breath."
"Worse still," said Varda the Nullspeaker, her voice a song of stillness, "the boy who wields Ashreign is unbound. The blade obeys him not like a weapon, but a partner."
They turned to the Stone Prophet, who had not spoken since the Fall of Caelith.
He rasped:
"Two flames now burn.
One to ignite.
One to erase."
A hush. Then Remeon stood.
"We must intervene. We must guide the boy. The old laws—"
"—are ash," interrupted Kirell of the Last Wind. Her wings, made of storm threads, crackled. "The gods are gone. The tyrant returns. And the Ashborn walks unchecked."
Then they all turned to the Eclipsed Seat.
Empty. Cold.
Until a voice rose from the shadows behind it.
"He must choose alone."
The council froze.
A figure stepped forward, face hidden by a burning veil. Her presence silenced even the fire-runes on the walls.
Eris Nocthollow. Keeper of the Veiled Flame.
Exiled. Forgotten. Feared.
"You all fear Draeven. But you fear Kael more."
"Because you know what Ashreign truly is…"
"It is not a blade.
It is a question.
And the boy is now its answer."
Far from the Hollow, Kael stood before the gate of the Desolate Marches.
Ashreign pulsed.
A new trail had opened.
"We go," Kael said.
Ysera and Veylan followed.
As they stepped through, the skies darkened. Ahead, smoke twisted into shapes—faces, memories, screams.
The Marches had awakened.
And Draeven was waiting.
The Desolate Marches were not merely dead—they were remembering.
Kael stepped onto the blackened soil, and the world shifted. Charred trees twisted like mourners in prayer, and the wind carried whispers in forgotten tongues. The sun above was veiled behind a gray shroud, casting no warmth.
Ashreign vibrated against his back, each pulse syncing with the ground—as if it were recognizing where it had once been forged.
"This place is haunted," Ysera murmured, voice tight. "Not by spirits. By regret."
Veylan unsheathed his dagger, its blade flickering with warding glyphs.
"The land mourns something. Or someone."
They passed through ruins swallowed by the sand, stone spires once part of a great empire lost to Draeven's first war. Echoes of those who fell clung to every shattered statue.
Kael paused beside a crumbled obelisk etched with flame-runes.
Suddenly, his vision blurred.
The air shimmered—and then he was no longer alone.
A thousand shadowed soldiers lined the path ahead. They bore the Ashcaller brand, mouths sewn shut, armor blackened by fire not from this world.
At their front stood a woman cloaked in crimson smoke. Her face hidden. Her hands empty.
"You bring the blade," she said, voice distant and fractured. "But do you bear the will?"
Kael gripped Ashreign.
The ghost-army remained still.
Testing.
"I'm not here to repeat Draeven's past," Kael said. "I'm here to end it."
The woman's head tilted.
"Then walk deeper, Ashbearer. But know this—"
"Every step will cost memory.
Every mile will cost truth.
And at the March's heart… your fire will be tested by what it once was."
She vanished.
So did the army.
Kael pressed forward.
For three days they walked.
They passed rivers of glass, where screams echoed beneath the surface. Stone beasts, long petrified, blinked as they passed. A black sun rose and fell, yet cast no time.
On the fourth night, Kael dreamed.
But it wasn't a dream.
He stood in a great chamber of fire. Before him was a forge. Upon it, Ashreign—broken.
And beside the forge…
Draeven, younger, eyes full of sorrow and rage, hammering in silence.
He looked at Kael.
"You stole the blade.
But can you carry the burden?"
Kael awoke with his hands burned.
And Ashreign glowing.
Meanwhile, at the Marches' far end, Draeven stood atop the Spire of Sorrow, arms outstretched.
The sands below twisted, rising into twisted silhouettes.
Souls. Bound. Tormented. Pressed into form.
"I do not raise an army," he said.
"I raise a judgment."
A thousand screaming figures knelt.
The Ashborn Host had returned.
By the sixth day, the Marches no longer resembled any known realm.
The land pulsed like a wounded beast. Hills bled smoke. Trees with iron bark whispered Kael's name in tongues only the dead should know.
Kael, Ysera, and Veylan pressed on, faces blackened with soot, eyes weary but determined.
Ashreign burned hotter with every step, its edge glowing as if in anticipation.
They were close.
At the heart of the Marches, the world opened like a scar.
A colossal crater stretched before them—miles wide and impossibly deep, rimmed by jagged spires of obsidian and rusted bones. At its center, a monolithic forge towered—floating just above a lake of shifting fire.
This was where Ashreign had been made.
And this was where Draeven had died.
Or so the world believed.
"This is it," Kael said, his voice barely a whisper. "The Flameforge."
"And something waits inside," Ysera added, fingers twitching toward her staff.
"Not something," Veylan said grimly.
"Someone."
They descended the obsidian steps that spiraled down into the crater.
The closer they came, the more the laws of nature faltered. Time bled sideways. Footsteps echoed backward. Shadows moved ahead of them.
Then the voice came.
Not loud.
Not hostile.
Patient.
"You carry my blade," it said, from the forge.
"You've walked my road.
But you know nothing of its cost."
From the lake of fire, a figure rose.
Draped in molten armor, face veiled in black flame, he carried no weapon.
The Forge-Keeper.
Not Draeven.
But his first flame.
The one who had lit his path.
And who had once tried to extinguish it.
"Kael of Nowhere," the Keeper intoned.
"Before you challenge the Tyrant, you must understand the price of power."
He gestured.
Suddenly, Kael was alone—his companions gone, the world a blur of light and fire.
The Keeper stepped forward, raising a hand.
"Face the truth of Ashreign.
Its fire does not burn for justice.
It burns for will.
Your will."
"Show me it is enough."
Ashreign ignited in Kael's hands.
A dozen flaming specters lunged from the forge—former wielders of Ashreign, lost across eras: kings, tyrants, martyrs.
Kael didn't flinch.
He met them all.
Steel clashed with memory.
Fire screamed against fire.
Each swing of Ashreign tore open truths—his fears, his doubts, his thirst for vengeance.
But Kael did not break.
He chose.
Not rage.
Not fear.
But purpose.
The specters vanished.
The Keeper knelt.
"Then the flame is yours."
As the vision faded, Kael found himself kneeling before the forge, his body intact, his spirit scarred.
Ashreign floated before him—its blade transformed.
No longer just flame.
Now edged with lightning and shadow, bound by Kael's own resolve.
The true Ashreign had awakened.
And Draeven would feel its call.