The road east was a graveyard of forgotten gods.
Twisted stone idols lined the path—some headless, others sunken to the waist in overgrowth. Vines bloomed where prayers had once been spoken, and the winds that howled through the trees carried murmurs not meant for mortal ears.
Serana led the way, sword drawn but lowered. Behind her, Veylan's shadow moved with unnatural grace, and Ysera walked in silence, her hands constantly brushing the hilts of her twin daggers.
Their destination: the Wyrmwood Wilds, a cursed expanse that devoured armies and spat out bones.
"This place feels wrong," Ysera muttered.
"That's because it remembers too much," Veylan replied. "Before kingdoms. Before fire. The Wyrmwood was alive. And it hated kings."
They crossed the threshold at dusk.
The forest shifted around them immediately.
Trees bent inward. Roots curled like fingers.
And overhead, the sky flickered between night and day—phasing, as though the wilds couldn't decide what time belonged to them.
Hours in, Serana heard the first whisper.
"Ashreign... sleeps."
She froze. The voice had no mouth. It coiled around her heart.
"Did you hear that?" she asked.
The others nodded.
Then came more:
"The fire-bearer falls. The tyrant rises. Time weeps."
A figure appeared on the path ahead.
Hunched. Cloaked in bark and moss. Its face obscured by a hollow deer skull.
"You carry the Watcher's scent," it rasped.
Serana raised her blade. "Speak. Are you beast or man?"
"Neither. I am Wyr-Kin, child of roots, guardian of the Wyrmheart. If you seek to reach the Flame's Grave, you must answer the wilds. Or die within them."
"We seek Draeven," Veylan said. "And we're not afraid of your riddles."
The Wyr-Kin chuckled.
"He passed through here. Left wounds in the trees and screams in the soil. You follow his ash trail... and so, the forest judges you."
Suddenly, vines lashed from the trees—grabbing Serana by the wrist, Ysera by the throat, Veylan by the ankle.
"Speak your truth."
"I fight to save Kael," Serana growled. "To bring him back."
"I walk the path of knives," Ysera gasped. "And if it leads through hell, so be it."
"I serve no god," Veylan whispered. "But I'll become one if I must, to stop Draeven."
The vines hesitated.
Then released.
The Wyr-Kin stepped back.
"Pass, then. The Wyrmwood sees you. And it waits."
As the companions disappeared deeper into the forest, the Wyr-Kin turned toward the shadows.
There, watching with eyes of emberless fire, stood the masked figure from the Tower.
"They move like stars about to fall," the Wyr-Kin said.
"Good," the masked man replied. "Let them burn. We need a fire great enough to blind the gods."
He vanished into the trees.
The Wyrmwood Wilds deepened with every step—like descending through layers of forgotten time.
The trees thickened, blackened at their roots. Leaves whispered not in wind, but in voices—voices too old, too angry. Strange totems appeared now: skulls of beasts that never walked the waking world, bound in silver thread and crimson thorns.
The companions did not speak. Every sound felt like a risk.
But the forest spoke for them.
At the center of the Wilds, they found it:
A massive crater, veiled in silver mist, pulsing with a slow, thunderous heartbeat.
At its center lay the Wyrmheart, an ancient dragon's skeleton—colossal, sprawled, and fused with the land. Its ribs curved like cathedral spires, its skull crowned with withered runes. Beneath its chest: a hole bored deep into the earth, glowing faintly with blue fire.
Ysera dropped to one knee, whispering:
"This… this is where the First Flame first bled into the world."
"No," Veylan said. "This is where it hid after the betrayal."
Serana stepped forward. Something in her blood pulsed harder near the flames—like an echo from Kael's bond.
Then the earth groaned.
From the hollow beneath the Wyrmheart, a shape emerged.
Serpentine.
Faceless.
Formed of bark, smoke, and dragonbone.
It spoke without a mouth, and its voice cracked the sky:
"You bear the Watcher's spark."
"He chose silence. Why do you seek his ruin?"
Serana raised her sword, but it felt small before the being.
"We seek the one who would shatter the world. Draeven."
"Then you must bleed," it said.
"What?" Ysera hissed.
"The Flame is sealed. You may not pass without sacrifice. Not strength. Not steel. But memory. One of you must give up your past—entirely."
The companions looked at each other, stunned.
"If none steps forward," the being warned, "the forest will keep your bones."
Wind howled.
The mist trembled.
Then—
"Take mine," Ysera said, stepping forward. "Erase who I was. If it brings us closer to stopping Draeven, then I don't need my name."
The creature loomed over her.
Its eyes—if it had any—narrowed.
"So be it."
It touched her forehead with a claw made of smoke.
Light burst.
She collapsed.
When she rose—her eyes were clear, but empty.
"Who… are you?" she asked.
Serana's voice broke.
"You're Ysera."
Ysera blinked. "Is that what I was?"
The Wyrmheart split.
A stairway of flame uncoiled beneath its bones—leading deeper, into the veins of the world.
Draeven's path.
They descended, leaving behind memory… and the last breath of the forest.
The stairway beneath the Wyrmheart was carved not of stone, but of solidified flame—white-hot at its edges, pulsing with a deep rhythm, like the heartbeat of the world. With every step the companions took, the air thickened, memories stirred, and the past whispered from the walls.
Ysera walked in silence, her steps sure but hollow. Whatever she had once been—child of dusk, dagger of shadow—was gone. Only the present remained.
"She gave everything," Veylan muttered. "And we haven't even seen the worst of it yet."
"Then we make it worth the price," Serana said, voice sharp. "We reach Draeven. We stop him. And we carry her memory, even if she doesn't."
The flame-stairs spiraled downward through a glowing chasm that narrowed the deeper they went. Strange shapes drifted beyond the walls—figures made of smoke and starlight, reaching out with arms that flickered between human and beast.
One whispered to Kael's name.
Another wept ash.
At the stair's end, they emerged into a vast cavern called the Cradle of Ember.
It was like standing inside the heart of a fallen sun.
Rivers of liquid fire flowed between blackened stone spires, and in the center, atop a platform of obsidian glass, stood a door—the Vault of the First Flame.
Sealed.
But not for long.
A sound echoed across the chamber.
A crack like thunder.
And then a figure appeared at the far end of the Cradle—tall, cloaked in ash-gray armor, with a crown of broken blades fused into his helm.
Lord Draeven.
He was not alone.
Behind him, the Sable Choir formed a ring, their chant vibrating through the fire-veins, warping light, bending the heat.
Draeven raised a single hand.
"You followed me far, little flames," he said. "But you are too late."
He turned toward the Vault.
And placed his palm against it.
"By right of return. By blood of betrayal. I unbind the Flame."
The Vault screamed.
Cracks spiderwebbed across its face.
The Cradle trembled.
And from the flame-rivers, shapes began to rise—monstrous and divine. Forgotten guardians forged in the First Fire, reborn at their master's command.
Serana raised her blade.
"Ready yourselves," she shouted. "This is where legends die—or begin."
As the flame-creatures charged and the world shook beneath their feet, Kael's distant presence stirred like a wind across a candle.
He felt them.
He remembered.
And something within Ashreign began to awaken.
The Cradle erupted in chaos.
Flame-born guardians surged from the molten rivers—colossi of burning bone and embered sinew. Each towered over the companions, eyes smoldering with divine wrath, mouths pouring molten tongues of forgotten chants.
Serana met the first with blade drawn, her boots sliding across the obsidian floor. Sparks flew as her strike clashed against a guardian's molten claw. The creature roared, but she danced beneath it, driving her sword deep into its underbelly.
It exploded in a rain of ash and light.
Beside her, Veylan moved like smoke and steel. His knives cut arcs of blue fire through the air. Each strike was a whisper of death. Where he stepped, fire dimmed. Where he struck, gods bled.
"There's too many!" Ysera cried out, though her face remained calm—empty, almost serene. She fought without memory, only instinct, her blades slicing clean lines through flame.
Over it all, Draeven stood motionless before the Vault.
His hand remained pressed against the door, his voice a cold chant:
"I return. I claim. I burn."
Each word cracked the Vault further.
A roar split the air—something ancient, wounded, and terrified.
The First Flame screamed.
Serana leapt over the scorched corpse of a guardian, skidding to a halt near the Vault's base. She could see Draeven clearly now. His armor was cracked. His crown bled ash. But his eyes—those hollow, ember-lit eyes—held no madness.
Only purpose.
"Draeven!" she shouted. "You'll destroy the Cycle!"
He turned slowly.
"I will free it."
Then, with a final word in a language that turned Serana's stomach to ice, he drove his sword into the Vault.
It shattered.
Not in sound or stone—but in reality.
A rift opened behind him—a blinding tear of white fire and abyssal shadow, swallowing time, light, and reason.
From within it, a hand emerged.
Large.
Burning.
Wreathed in the remains of ancient stars.
The Hand of the First Flame—the primal god Kael once bound, the source of all magic, fury, and creation.
Veylan threw a dagger—not at the hand, but at Draeven.
It struck his shoulder. The tyrant staggered.
"NOW!" Serana screamed.
She lunged.
The Vault's collapse pulled everything inward.
The Cradle became a maelstrom of fire, shadow, and screaming gods.
Far away, in the stillness between death and time, Kael awoke.
He gasped.
Not in a bed. Not in the world.
But in a mirror of flame.
He saw them.
Serana. Veylan. Ysera.
Fighting.
Bleeding.
Dying.
And in his chest, Ashreign pulsed once more.
"No more," Kael whispered. "Not without me."
And then the mirror shattered.
Kael stood in the void between worlds—flames spiraling around him, past and future bleeding into one. The pieces of the mirror he shattered floated nearby, each reflecting moments he hadn't lived yet—futures he hadn't earned.
His hand tightened around the hilt of Ashreign.
Once dormant, the blade now pulsed with a heartbeat of its own. It had slept, as he had. But with the Vault breached, the Cycle broken, and Draeven unleashed, it remembered.
And Kael did too.
The betrayal.
The fall.
The war that erased kingdoms.
The promise he made before his first death:
"I will return—not as a king, but as reckoning."
The void cracked beneath him.
A voice echoed—a voice older than the stars.
"You cross into fire uninvited."
Kael turned. A figure loomed before him—clad in burning robes, eyes molten suns, mouth full of embers.
The Flamekeeper—the final steward of balance.
"You are dead," it said. "You have no claim."
"Then take it from me," Kael answered.
Ashreign flared.
The blade ignited with pure essence—not heat, not light, but will.
The Flamekeeper struck first. A wave of searing judgment surged toward Kael—but he did not falter. He raised Ashreign, sliced through the flame, and stepped forward.
One step for his friends.
One for his stolen throne.
One for vengeance.
They clashed.
Fire against fire.
Memory against god.
And in that moment, Kael became more than reborn.
He became a wound in the world—a jagged mark of refusal.
With a cry that shattered stars, he drove Ashreign through the Flamekeeper's chest.
The being screamed.
Then crumbled into dust and song.
The void shuddered.
And Kael—Ashborn, Reclaimed, Unforgiven—fell back to the world in a pillar of fire.
At the broken Vault, Serana stood bloodied, blade raised, the hand of the First Flame towering above her.
Ysera knelt beside a fallen Veylan.
Draeven turned as light exploded behind him.
A figure emerged—cloaked in fire, eyes of molten fury, sword burning brighter than the sun.
"Draeven," Kael said.
"You're dead," Draeven whispered.
"Not enough," Kael answered.
And he walked through the fire, toward war.