Malgrith stepped forward—and the world flinched.
Every breath of wind silenced. Every flicker of light dimmed, as though reality held its breath. The god's form flickered between shapes: a burning titan, a man without a face, a child screaming in forgotten tongues. Each footfall scorched the earth, but more terrifying was what it didn't touch—blades dulled, armor tarnished, names vanished from minds.
Kael raised Ashreign. The sword trembled in his grip—not from fear, but recognition.
"You know me," Malgrith whispered, his many voices echoing from nowhere. "You who once chained me. Ashborn... traitor... brother."
That last word struck like thunder. Kael's knees buckled.
"What?" Mira gasped. "He said—"
"Lies," Kael hissed. "He's a god of unmaking. He'll say anything to unwrite me."
But Ashreign pulsed again—this time not in denial, but sorrow.
Ysera stepped beside him. "Even if it's true, Kael... that means you once defeated him."
Kael's breath slowed. "Then I'll do it again."
He surged forward.
Malgrith raised a hand—and the sky shattered. Not cracked, shattered, like glass, revealing a void behind it. From that abyss poured spirits—wraiths without eyes, wrapped in chains of molten memory.
Ashreign sang.
Kael ducked low, rolled beneath a sweeping claw of fire, and leapt—blade first—into Malgrith's chest.
The sword struck.
And stopped.
Not because it couldn't cut—but because Malgrith caught it.
Their eyes locked—Kael's burning with defiance, Malgrith's with a hollow, endless calm.
"Still you cling," the god said, "to a self you no longer are. You are no warrior, Kaelrion. You are what's left."
Then he shoved.
Kael flew backward, crashing into a crumbling wall. Bones screamed. He tasted blood.
But Ashreign flared in midair, halting its fall, and hovered—waiting for him to rise.
And Kael did.
Bruised, breathless, but rising.
Because behind him, Mira, Ysera, Thorne, Serana—all stood ready. Runes gleamed. Wards shimmered. Old magics stirred.
"You're right," Kael said, wiping blood from his mouth. "I'm not who I was."
He grabbed the sword again.
"I'm something worse."
Ashreign ignited—white flame this time.
And Kael charged once more.
Ashreign screamed in Kael's grasp.
White fire danced across its edge, hot enough to scorch thought, yet cool as memory lost to time. The sword was no longer a weapon—it was a wound, a tear in the world's fabric where the past bled into now.
Malgrith raised his hand to meet the charge. The air around the god rippled as if resisting his presence. With a gesture, he summoned a wall of chained wraiths, their shrieks carving silence into the battlefield.
Kael didn't slow.
He split through the wraiths like light through smoke.
Each one burst into sparks and memory, feeding the sword, empowering it. Fragments of forgotten names, lost songs, dying promises swirled into the blade. Ashreign drank history—and Kael wielded it like vengeance reborn.
He reached Malgrith in a blink.
The god lashed out with a claw made of unraveling years.
Kael ducked under it, twisted, and drove Ashreign toward Malgrith's chest again—not as a mortal warrior, but as a keeper of memory.
The blade struck true.
This time, it sank deep.
Malgrith roared.
The sound wasn't pain—it was disbelief.
Light burst from the wound—white and gold, shattering shadows. Kael twisted the blade, and the god staggered backward, trails of flame and forgotten faces leaking from the wound.
Ysera raised her staff. "Now!"
A dozen runes ignited across the ground. Thorne slammed his fist into a keystone. Mira whispered an incantation older than war.
Chains of starlight erupted from the earth.
They coiled around Malgrith's limbs—bindings not of matter, but of meaning.
Each link whispered a name.
Each name was a memory that refused to be forgotten.
The god howled as the bindings pulled tighter, dragging him toward the rift from which he came.
Kael stood above him, breathing hard, Ashreign still buried in Malgrith's chest.
"By flame and oath," Kael said, voice steady, "you are not welcome in this world."
Malgrith's fading gaze narrowed. "You think this victory ends me?"
Kael leaned closer. "No. But it reminds the world you can bleed."
He ripped Ashreign free.
Malgrith shattered into flame and dust.
The rift slammed shut.
Silence followed.
Then came breath. Then came cheers. Then came weeping.
The first battle was over.
But Kael knew.
This was only the beginning.
The battlefield still simmered. Smoke curled skyward like the last sighs of fallen gods. Around the shattered altar, silence stretched thick—reverent, wary, exhausted.
Kael lowered Ashreign slowly. The blade's fire receded, shrinking to a pale glow. He could still feel the phantom weight of Malgrith's essence clinging to it, like cinders that refused to die.
Ysera approached, her robes torn, her hair streaked with ash. "We wounded a god today."
"No," Kael said softly, eyes fixed on the cracked horizon. "We reminded one."
Thorne limped over, a gash stitched with magic across his shoulder. "If that was just a reminder... what's it gonna take to kill one?"
Mira didn't answer. Her gaze was distant, fixed not on the present, but the echo of what had just passed.
She whispered, "He wasn't alone."
Kael turned. "What did you see?"
"When Malgrith was unraveling… I felt them," she said. "Others. Bound. Forgotten. Watching."
Ysera's eyes narrowed. "The Chained?"
Mira nodded. "They're waking, Kael. One god bled—and now the others remember their pain."
Kael tightened his grip on Ashreign. It pulsed once, almost like acknowledgment. In the back of his mind, a strange sensation stirred—like voices caught in fog. Not words, but wounds.
Memories not his own.
"They were imprisoned," Kael said. "Long before this age. Sealed beneath cities, inside storms, beneath the veins of mountains."
"And if Malgrith's awakening fractured the veil…" Ysera trailed off.
Kael completed it. "Then the others are clawing toward the light."
Suddenly, the wind shifted.
A whisper on the breeze—not air, but breath.
From the east, over the Bloodhewn Hills, came a low, rising chant. A language Kael didn't recognize, but Ashreign did—the blade vibrated in his hand.
Mira paled. "That sound… it's a summoning."
Thorne drew his axe. "We just sealed one ancient bastard. Who the hell is trying to bring another one back?"
Ysera pointed to the horizon. "We need to go."
Kael looked to the sky. Stars flickered there—some pulsing red, others blinking out.
The world was shifting again.
He sheathed Ashreign, shoulders heavy with fate.
"Then we ride," he said.
"To the east," Mira added grimly, "where the next chain is cracking."
The moon was a pale, watching eye by the time Kael and his companions reached the edge of the Wyrmroot Vale. A thin mist coiled over the cracked stones, and the scent of old magic choked the air. This place had not been walked in centuries—and it made no effort to hide that truth.
Ysera dismounted first, placing her hand to the earth. "Leylines run deep here. Raw. Unfiltered. Whatever's calling... it's not just summoning a god. It's bargaining."
"Who the hell bargains with gods?" Thorne grunted, pulling his axe free.
"Desperate men," Mira answered, "or fools with ancient blood."
Kael stepped forward, eyes narrowing. Ahead, half-buried in the vale's heart, stood a ruined monolith—a broken temple of jagged stone and hollow echoes. Sigils still burned faintly along its base, not carved by hand, but seared by divine presence.
From within, a voice spoke.
Low.
Measured.
Hungry.
"You bring the blade that felled my brother."
Kael drew Ashreign, its glow flickering like a heartbeat. "I bring a warning."
A figure stepped into view. Cloaked in layered robes of dusk-silver, his eyes shimmered with the dull light of forgotten stars. Veins of gold crawled up his throat—god-blood, diluted but potent.
He smiled. "Warnings are for the weak."
Mira whispered urgently, "That's no priest. He's a vessel."
The man spread his arms. "I am the Pact-Bound. I bear the oath of Azraeth, the Shackled Ember. He stirs, Kael of Ashreign. He saw your defiance. He envies your fire."
Kael raised the sword. "Then he'll envy my steel next."
But the Pact-Bound only chuckled. "Not all gods wish to destroy the world. Some… wish to own it. And they offer gifts in return."
Behind him, fire sparked—blue and silver, unnatural and wild. The ruined altar reassembled itself piece by piece, stones rising like puppets on invisible strings. A figure formed within it.
A face.
Burning eyes behind a helm of shattered stars.
Azraeth.
Still chained.
But smiling.
"Join me," said the Pact-Bound. "Kneel, and we can shape this broken realm anew."
Kael stepped forward, sword burning brighter.
"I already shattered one god's promise."
He leveled Ashreign.
"Let's see what your god's chains are made of."
The shattered altar groaned as the chains binding Azraeth shimmered to life—each link forged from emberlight, rune-branded, ancient beyond reckoning. Though the god's body had not yet fully emerged, his presence filled the vale like a rising tide of heat and hunger.
Kael stood firm, Ashreign pulsing against his palm, brighter with every heartbeat.
Beside him, Mira muttered an incantation under her breath, fingers weaving runes into the misty air. Ysera dropped to a crouch and traced a binding circle into the stone with chalk and blood, her expression grim.
"I don't think we can kill this one," Thorne growled, his grip tightening around his axe.
Kael didn't look away from the god. "Then we contain him."
The Pact-Bound took a step forward. "You stand against a gift, Kael. Azraeth offers dominion, vision, flame that does not die."
Kael raised Ashreign, the tip glowing white-hot.
"I've seen what gods do with dominion."
Suddenly, the chains around Azraeth snapped taut. A rumble echoed from deep beneath the earth as one of the sigil-stones at the monolith cracked apart. Sparks flared skyward—then a roar split the night.
Azraeth's voice, though still chained, burned through every mind present.
"Mortals broke the sky. I offered light. You cast me into shadow. But I remember the fire."
The god surged forward—only inches—but the ground quaked with his fury. Heat blasted outward. Trees ignited. The monolith behind him crumbled, revealing a fragment of his charred armor and a hand larger than any mortal's, clawed and wreathed in ethereal flame.
Mira screamed, "He's breaking through!"
"Now!" Ysera shouted. "Kael!"
Kael sprang forward, plunging Ashreign deep into the earth at the altar's edge. The blade exploded in light, casting a corona of silver flame around the god's form.
For a moment—just a moment—the chains brightened, reforged in living light. Azraeth reeled backward, his bellow twisting into a howl.
The Pact-Bound fell to his knees, eyes wide, bleeding light from every orifice.
"You… you reforged his prison!"
Kael gritted his teeth. "Not reforged. Rewritten."
Ashreign's flame etched new bindings across the old. Not forged by ancient gods, but by will—by resistance.
Azraeth hissed one last time, eyes narrowing to coals.
"You are not the end, Kael. You are the ember that feeds the blaze."
And with that, he was bound again.
The altar collapsed.
The light faded.
Silence returned.
Kael collapsed to one knee, panting.
Mira dropped beside him, eyes wide. "You bound him using your will. Using Ashreign."
Ysera looked to the cracked sky. "It bought us time. But gods don't forget."
Kael rose slowly, eyes heavy but fierce.
"Then we give them something new to remember."