The sky over the eastern kingdoms turned a deep crimson.
From the shattered peaks of the Ashspire Mountains to the silver plains of Haldren Vale, the winds carried the same warning:
Draeven marches.
Kael emerged from the Marches changed.
The once flickering edge of Ashreign now shimmered with controlled fury—etched with veins of lightning and whispers of lost light.
Wherever he stepped, the ash parted.
The world recognized him now.
Ysera and Veylan waited at the crater's rim, eyes wide.
"You're… different," Ysera said softly.
"The forge burns in him," Veylan murmured. "He's no longer just a bearer. He is the blade."
Kael's voice was quiet, certain.
"We gather them. All of them. Before Draeven burns what's left."
They traveled first to Highreach, capital of the Aethryn Skyhold.
The floating city drifted now, wounded from Draeven's first strike—its engines limping through storm-winds, its banners torn.
There, Kael met Queen Serana Vire, ruler of the windborn, her throne carved from stormglass.
"You seek an alliance," she said.
"But I see only ruin in your wake."
Kael stepped forward, no courtly grace—only purpose.
"Then look again. I carry the blade that once broke Draeven's reign.
And I will do it again.
With or without your banners."
Serana studied him.
Then she knelt.
From the cliffs of Stonewrought, the dwarves joined—led by General Korrim, whose warhammer had shattered titan bones.
From the ruined jungles of Myrrh-Ka, the beastmasters came, bearing creatures lost to myth.
Even the Silent Monks of Vhalis—who had not spoken in five centuries—broke their vow.
Their leader spoke only once:
"We dreamed of the Flame.
It bore your name."
By month's end, they had become more than an army.
They were a reckoning.
But in the blackened heart of the world, Draeven watched.
From atop the Obsidian Throne, surrounded by his Ashborn Legion, he reached toward the sky with a single outstretched hand.
Behind him, a rift opened.
Not to this world.
But to what was forgotten.
"He rallies the world," Draeven whispered.
"Let them come."
"I have no need of kingdoms.
I will remake creation itself."
As Kael and his allies readied for war, the sky cracked once more.
This time, not from fire.
But from something older than flame.
Something waking.
Something watching.
The banners of the united kingdoms fluttered under a blood-red sky.
Atop the ancient walls of Brelmoor Keep, Kael stood overlooking the valley where the Ashborn Legion had gathered—a tide of flame, bone, and hatred that stretched beyond the horizon.
They had come.
And the first true battle of this new war was about to be written in fire and blood.
Brelmoor stood as the last bastion between the eastern realms and Draeven's path. Its fortifications were ancient, enchanted with runes of warding. But against an army that did not die, even the strongest walls could only buy time.
Kael turned to his commanders—Queen Serana, General Korrim, and High Monk Silas of Vhalis.
"We hold here," Kael said, eyes locked on the horizon. "Not because it's easy. But because if we fall, the rest of the world falls with us."
"And if we die?" Korrim grunted.
"Then we die standing on the ashes of gods," Kael answered, raising Ashreign. "And we burn brighter than they ever did."
The Ashborn struck at dawn.
There were no warhorns. No drums.
Only the sound of a thousand broken souls screaming as one.
They surged forward—spectral blades, obsidian-chained beasts, and fire-sick titans that howled Draeven's name.
Kael met them at the front gate.
Ashreign cleaved the first wave in a single arc of flame and lightning, cutting through wraith and flesh alike. The blade sang with each strike, hungering for more.
"FOR THE LIVING!" Serana cried, her stormglass glaive glowing as she descended from the skies on wings of wind.
"FOR THE EARTH!" roared Korrim, smashing his warhammer into the ground and shattering the bones of a charging warbeast.
"FOR THE FLAME THAT CHOOSES!" Kael bellowed, plunging into the heart of the battle.
The clash raged through the day.
Ash turned to mud.
Blood to smoke.
Kael faced a Firesworn, a twelve-foot general with molten skin and claws like spears. It snarled:
"You are not Draeven. You are a child wielding a relic!"
"Then let this relic end your kind," Kael growled.
They fought like gods. In the end, Ashreign pierced the creature's heart, and Kael stood, blackened and breathing fire.
But for every Ashborn he struck down, two more took its place.
The wall was failing.
Kael raised his blade and screamed.
Ashreign flared—too bright, too fierce.
And something deep within the blade answered.
A pulse spread across the battlefield.
For one moment… the Ashborn halted.
Then many screamed—and crumbled into ash.
Ysera, watching from the mage-tower, gasped.
"He's awakening more of it. The true power of the blade."
Night fell.
The siege had not broken them.
But at a terrible cost.
Brelmoor still stood—but half its defenders lay dead.
Kael dropped to one knee, bloodied and hollow-eyed.
The flame within Ashreign dimmed.
And far across the fields, standing atop a scorched ridge, Draeven watched in silence.
He smiled.
"Good. Show me everything, Kael.
So I can take it all back… when I end you."
Three days passed since the Siege of Brelmoor, and the fires still smoldered. The dead were buried in ash. The wounded walked with haunted eyes. Kael stood alone at the wall's edge, gazing west—toward a realm untouched by map or memory.
That night, he dreamed again.
But this time, it wasn't Draeven.
A voice, ancient and gentle, threaded through the silence:
"Ashreign is not whole.
You wield a shard of a forgotten promise."
Kael turned within the dream.
A woman of light and stone stood before him. She wore no crown, but the air bent in reverence around her. Her skin shimmered with starlight, and her eyes were endless spirals of silver dusk.
"Who are you?" Kael asked.
"I am what remains of the Arkhari—those who forged the First Flame, before even Draeven's time."
"Why come to me now?"
She extended her hand.
"Because the blade is waking. And soon, so will He."
A vision flooded his mind—
A towering city swallowed by dunes.
Spiraling towers forged of bones and brass.
And beneath it, a gate chained by suns, pulsing with light older than the gods.
"Seek the ruins of Vel Sareth.
There lies the Second Ember.
Only with it can Ashreign reach its true form.
And only with it can you stand against what Draeven means to become."
Kael awoke gasping, drenched in sweat.
Ashreign hummed against his back.
And in the distance, the western wind carried sand.
By dawn, Kael gathered his core allies—Ysera, Veylan, and Serana.
"We leave for the western forgottenlands," Kael said. "The battle at Brelmoor bought us time—but we won't survive the next without what lies beyond."
Ysera frowned.
"Vel Sareth? That place is a myth. A death-field."
"It's worse than that," Veylan muttered. "It's Draeven's birthplace."
The room fell silent.
Kael's gaze never wavered.
"Then it's where this ends… or truly begins."
That night, miles away, Draeven stood before his growing rift.
He placed his hand against the shimmering veil, and a second pulse echoed through the world.
Something beyond the gate stirred.
It did not speak.
It simply opened its eyes.
The western sky swallowed the sun whole.
Kael and his companions rode into the sands of the forgottenlands, each gust of wind scraping against armor and soul. Before them, the Dune Sea stretched endlessly—burning gold by day, frozen black by night.
At its center waited Vel Sareth, the sunken cradle of Draeven's birth… and the resting place of the Second Ember.
Few maps marked this place. Fewer returned from it.
The land itself seemed to reject memory.
Even Ysera's magic flickered, swallowed by the silence.
"No birds. No beasts," she whispered. "It's like the sand feeds on sound."
"Or hope," Veylan muttered.
On the third night, they made camp in the shadow of a broken monolith—half-buried in sand, etched with runes Kael couldn't read. Serana stood watch, eyes on the horizon. The wind had stopped.
Not died—stopped.
Then came the whispers.
Faint. Inhuman. Dragging syllables like knives.
Kael rose, gripping Ashreign.
Shapes stirred in the dunes—figures made of sand and glass, faces hollow, hands reaching.
The Thirstbound.
They attacked without sound, only pressure—suffocating waves of fury and hunger.
Ysera lit the skies with arcane fire.
Veylan's arrows turned to silver mid-flight.
Serana danced through them like a gale of blades.
And Kael—
Kael became the storm.
Ashreign pulsed, and with each swing, lightning kissed flame, turning sand to glass, shattering the dead.
But there were so many.
Then the runes on the monolith flared.
A new presence entered the fray—a warrior cloaked in obsidian robes, wielding a staff tipped with crystal bone.
With one word, the Thirstbound froze.
Then crumbled.
The warrior turned to Kael, removing their veil.
A woman. Bronze-skinned, marked with ancient ink that glowed beneath her skin.
"You seek Vel Sareth," she said, voice like shifting stone.
"You will never survive it without me."
Kael stepped forward, not lowering his blade.
"Who are you?"
"I am Aezra, last Sentinel of the Ember Tombs. And I was sworn to destroy the blade you carry."
Silence.
Then she added:
"But perhaps…
It's time I wielded it instead."
As dawn rose behind them, casting long shadows across the sands, Kael looked out toward the distant shimmer of ruins on the horizon.
Vel Sareth waited.
And beneath it, something stirred.
Something that remembered how Draeven was made.
Vel Sareth rose like a jagged scar against the horizon—broken towers half-consumed by dunes, statues weeping sand, and obsidian gates etched with forgotten prayers. Time had not merely passed here—it had bled out.
Kael stood at the threshold, Ashreign humming softly at his side.
"This city was once alive," Aezra said. "Now it's a memory trying to forget itself."
"And we're walking into its heart," Ysera muttered.
The wind stopped again.
Behind them, the world watched.
Ahead, it waited.
The gate opened with a whisper, not a sound.
Inside, Vel Sareth was a city buried upside down—its streets plunged deep into the earth, spiraling downward like a dying star. Inverted spires jutted from cavern ceilings. The walls shimmered with thin veils of time.
"This place is wrong," Veylan said. "It feels… inside out."
"That's because it is," Aezra replied. "Vel Sareth didn't fall. It was swallowed. To hide what's below."
Ashreign flared once—just once—and the air bent.
Kael gritted his teeth.
Something was calling to the blade.
They descended for hours—maybe days. Time warped here. Footsteps echoed before they were taken. Serana whispered that her reflection moved faster than she did. Ysera's spells flickered, obeying rules they no longer understood.
Then, deep beneath, they found it:
The Ember Tomb.
A great hall carved into a mountain's womb, its center held a suspended flame, black at the edges, golden at the core. Beneath it: a pedestal of glass and bone.
The Second Ember.
But as Kael stepped forward, a voice cut through the chamber:
"You are not welcome here."
From the shadows emerged a figure cloaked in embers, face wrapped in bandages scorched to ash.
The Warden of Flame.
Eyes like forge-coals locked onto Ashreign.
"You carry a lie.
And now, it will burn."
The Warden raised a twisted blade—formed of the same black fire as the ember above—and lunged.
Kael met him mid-strike.
Ashreign clashed with the ancient weapon, the collision shattering the ground beneath them.
Power erupted.
Fire screamed.
And the tomb began to collapse.
Above, far from the ruins, Draeven stood before the Rift once more.
He extended his hand into it—farther than before.
And this time, something reached back.
"Time," Draeven whispered, smiling, "is no longer your ally, Kael. I will unmake your past… before you ever drew breath."