The Ember Tomb crumbled around them—pillars bursting into flame, time shattering like glass.
Kael and the Warden of Flame fought at the eye of the inferno, two blinding forces locked in a storm of memory and fire.
Ashreign screamed with each strike, its edge glowing gold. But the Warden's blade burned darker—fed by something older than death.
"You are not worthy," the Warden snarled, forcing Kael to his knees. "Ashreign chooses flameborn, not broken heirs."
Kael gritted his teeth, blood on his lips.
The weight of the blade—of destiny—pressed down like mountains.
Then he heard it.
A second voice.
Not the Warden's.
Not Draeven's.
Ashreign itself.
"You are not chosen, Kael…
You are forged."
The tomb shuddered.
Above, the Second Ember burst into a thousand burning fragments—and poured into Ashreign.
Kael roared as the blade ignited anew—its hilt branding his palm, its edge splitting light and shadow alike.
The steel turned black at the spine, with veins of living flame.
Ashreign was no longer a relic.
It was awake.
Kael rose, fire swirling around him.
"I don't need to be chosen," he said, voice like thunder. "I choose you."
He struck.
The Warden blocked.
But the black flame licked through the parry, cutting deep—not flesh, but memory. The Warden's shape twisted, unraveling into embers.
"It… remembers me," he gasped, staring at the blade. "It was mine… once…"
And then he was gone—scattered into ash, his fire taken into Ashreign's core.
The tomb groaned.
The Second Ember had merged.
Kael turned to his allies—Ysera shielding them with a collapsing barrier of violet light, Aezra bleeding from the head, Serana and Veylan dragging her clear.
"We move!" Kael shouted.
They fled the tomb as the ruins convulsed.
The path they'd come through was gone—collapsed. But a new one opened, lit by Ashreign's fire.
As they emerged into the deeper catacombs, Aezra whispered:
"You did it."
"No," Kael said. "I started it."
Elsewhere, across the world…
Time stuttered.
A city on the southern cliffs vanished for half a breath, then returned, covered in moss.
A child in the east aged ten years in an instant.
Storms reversed their spin.
And in the north…
A man who had died a thousand years ago… opened his eyes.
Beneath the Ember Tomb, the catacombs of Vel Sareth yawned wide—choked with dust, lined with statues whose eyes followed Kael's steps. These were no burial halls. They were memory crypts, sealed not to preserve the dead, but to imprison what they knew.
Ashreign, reborn with the Second Ember, burned low and steady at Kael's back. The flames whispered now—not in rage, but in warning.
"We are walking through a graveyard of truths," Aezra muttered, voice hushed. "Here lie the ones Draeven made… and broke."
Ysera pressed her hand to a wall—stone turned warm beneath her palm.
"This place is alive," she said. "It's listening."
Deeper in, the catacombs shifted. Stone gave way to boneglass—a crystal grown from marrow and memory. It pulsed faintly as they walked, lighting their path with a sickly glow.
In one chamber, they passed a tree growing from a sarcophagus, its bark black, its leaves made of names.
In another, they found a throne—occupied.
A skeleton in rusted armor, perfectly seated, blade still in hand.
Kael slowed.
The air felt heavier.
Ashreign hummed once.
Then the skeleton's jaw moved.
"You wear the Reaper's Fang," it said.
"Then you carry our burden."
Its voice was not echoed. It was echo itself.
Kael approached cautiously.
"Who are you?"
"I was Varic Vellstorm, the first to wield Ashreign… and the first to fall to it."
A pause.
"This blade remembers. It passes not from hand to hand… but from ghost to ghost."
Kael knelt.
"Tell me what I need to know."
"Draeven was once our brother," Varic said, hollow voice rising. "But when he touched the Rift, he unwrote that bond. He became a god of unmaking."
"Then how do we stop him?"
Varic raised a skeletal hand, pointing deeper into the catacombs.
"There is one more Ember.
The final spark.
It lies in the vault of the Shattered Queen.
But beware—she remembers love… and hates it."
Suddenly, the walls trembled.
A great sound—like reversed thunder—boomed above.
Ysera gasped.
"Time's bending again."
From the boneglass, images flickered—cities burning, oceans pulled skyward, Kael dying in a dozen ways.
Serana drew her blades.
"We need to move. Now."
Far above, in the waking world, Draeven stood upon the shattered tower of Elarion.
Time unraveled at his touch.
In his palm, the air bent like molten glass.
"Let the world peel open," he whispered.
"Let Kael see every path… where he loses."
The passage narrowed as Kael led the group deeper—through a spiraling corridor of boneglass that pulsed like a dying heartbeat. Every step down was a memory given shape. Voices whispered from cracks in the stone, fragments of forgotten vows and long-dead names.
Ashreign pulsed in Kael's grip, its fire dimming the deeper they went.
"It doesn't like this place," Aezra said.
"Neither do I," Serana muttered. "It feels like walking through someone's corpse."
Ahead, the corridor ended at a gate unlike the others—made not of stone or metal, but woven shadow, held together by threads of silver flame.
Etched into the threshold were three words:
Here Love Died.
"The Shattered Queen waits beyond," Aezra warned. "She was Draeven's final lover… before he traded her soul for a glimpse into the Rift."
Kael stepped forward.
"And now she guards the last Ember?"
"No," Ysera said, touching the threads of shadow. "She is the Ember. What's left of it, anyway."
The gate unraveled at Kael's touch.
Beyond it lay a throne room long forgotten—a palace sunken in sorrow.
Petals of crystalized memory floated through the air.
At the center sat a woman of glass and void. Her hair was a veil of stars, her eyes a mirror of Kael's flame.
The Shattered Queen.
She did not rise.
She remembered.
"You are his echo," she whispered. "You walk like him… burn like him… die like him."
"I am not Draeven," Kael said, stepping forward.
The Queen's gaze sharpened.
"No. You are his second sin."
She stood.
And the palace wept.
Glass thorns erupted from the walls. Chains of memory lashed from the floor. Her voice echoed like a dirge across forgotten graves.
"If you want the Ember… then break me."
Ashreign lit.
Kael met her charge.
The battle was grief incarnate—blades slicing through sorrow made real. Every strike summoned ghosts. Every parry spilled visions of Draeven's twisted promises.
Serana fought to keep the shadows at bay.
Ysera rewove the unraveling space around them.
Veylan bled, dragging Aezra from falling debris.
And Kael—he fought her alone.
At the last, Ashreign locked with the Queen's glaive—fire against frost, memory against pain.
Kael pushed forward.
"You deserved more than him," he said, voice shaking.
The Queen's eyes widened.
And for a moment, she smiled.
Then she shattered—glass and light and a single spark of flame drifting down.
Kael caught it.
The Third Ember.
Ashreign drank it in.
The blade changed again—gaining not just power, but weight. It pulsed with loss, with remembrance.
Kael collapsed to one knee.
"We have it," he breathed. "All three."
"Then Draeven will come," Aezra whispered, limping toward him. "Because now… he has to."
Above, far across the world, Draeven looked up from the Rift.
His eyes narrowed.
"So be it, Kael.
Come to me.
And bury the world in your fire."
The silence after battle was heavier than the clash of blades.
Kael stood alone at the edge of the shattered palace, Ashreign glowing with a layered, haunted light. Each of the Three Embers—the First of Flame, the Second of Memory, the Third of Grief—now burned within the sword. But they did not harmonize. They warred.
And Kael was the battlefield.
His breath came ragged. Not from exhaustion—but from the pressure of what he now carried.
With each beat of his heart, images struck him:
Flames devouring villages he never knew.
Lovers mourning him in lives he'd never lived.
Draeven's hand on his shoulder—whispering a brother's name Kael couldn't remember.
He dropped to one knee.
"Kael!" Serana ran to him. "What's wrong?"
"They're… inside me," he said through gritted teeth. "The Embers… they remember everything."
Aezra knelt beside him, fingers pressed to his forehead.
"You weren't forged to hold them all. No one was."
Ysera hovered nearby, her eyes glowing violet as she traced sigils midair.
"I can contain them, but only for a while. You'll need to forge balance within yourself. Or they'll tear you apart."
Kael looked up. In Ashreign's mirrored blade, he saw three reflections of himself.
One wreathed in fire.
One cloaked in shadow.
One bleeding from the eyes, staring at him.
"Then I'll do it," he said. "Because I won't be his echo."
The group moved again—slowly, upward. The catacombs resisted their passage, paths collapsing behind them. Time blurred. Aezra's compass spun wildly. They saw glimpses of other worlds—Kael dying, Kael conquering, Kael kneeling beside Draeven.
But forward remained true.
Each step, Kael felt the Embers grind within him, testing his resolve.
At one junction, he paused.
A memory struck him—not his.
A throne room.
Draeven kneeling before a king.
A child crying behind a curtain.
Kael whispered:
"I know this place…"
"Kael?" Serana looked back.
He blinked.
The vision was gone.
"Nothing. Let's keep moving."
Above, the surface drew near.
Sunlight pierced the final veil of dust.
But so did a presence—colder than ice, sharper than steel.
A figure waited on the threshold.
Draped in gold and shadow.
Not Draeven. Not yet.
But a Harbinger of his will.
"The Ashreign walks," the being said. "And the world answers. You should have stayed buried, Kael."
Kael rose.
Ashreign burned steady in his grasp.
"Then bury me yourself."
The surface wind hit Kael like a tidal wave—fresh, cold, and clean. But standing before the exit of the catacombs was a figure wrapped in layers of gold-threaded shadow, face hidden behind a helm shaped like a raven's beak.
The Harbinger of Draeven.
The wind did not touch him.
"Three Embers. One sword. One soul," the Harbinger said. "But you are still broken, Kael. You walk with borrowed fire."
Kael stepped forward, Ashreign steady in hand.
"Then let's see if it burns true."
The Harbinger struck first—his blade was not steel but absence, a curve of void that erased the light it touched.
Kael parried, but even the clash of blades unraveled sound. The world rippled around each strike. Ashreign fought to hold form, its three Embers clashing in resonance.
Flame roared.
Shadow surged.
And in the center—Kael's will burned brighter.
The others fell back, a protective ward spun up by Ysera shielding them as the two combatants tore through the clearing. Trees ignited. Stones melted. Time slowed, fractured, then snapped back.
The Harbinger's voice echoed inside Kael's mind.
"Draeven remembers you. His brother. His better. His failure."
Kael answered in kind—through steel.
Ashreign struck true, slicing through voidsteel and memory alike.
The Harbinger staggered.
"You are not him," the Harbinger hissed. "You are just the ruin he left behind."
"Good," Kael said, stepping forward. "Because I'm not here to repeat his story…"
Ashreign ignited.
"I'm here to end it."
With one final cry, Kael drove the blade through the Harbinger's core. Not into flesh—but into the knot of time that anchored him.
The being exploded into ash and golden motes—his last thought carried on the wind:
"He waits… at the edge… of all."
Silence fell.
Kael dropped to one knee, gasping.
Serana ran to his side.
"You're hurt."
"No," he said, rising. "I'm awake."
Behind them, the entrance to the catacombs collapsed—buried forever.
Before them, the fractured world stretched wide.
Mountains cracked by timequake scars.
Forests turned to crystal.
Skies stitched with falling stars.
And in the far distance…
A tower of black stone rising where no tower had been the day before.
The Riftspire.
Draeven's final sanctum.
"This is it," Aezra whispered.
"The war begins now."
Kael gripped Ashreign. Its flame burned steady.
"Then we bring him fire."