The veil swallowed them whole.
Kael expected pain, or fire, or the pressure of passing into another realm. Instead—he felt weightless. Suspended in breathless silence, surrounded by drifting embers that pulsed like heartbeat sparks. No ground. No sky. Just a sea of floating ash.
Then a voice—soft, ancient, layered—echoed in the dark.
"Speak your name."
Kael opened his mouth, but something held him back. Not fear. Instinct.
The others stood beside him, equally suspended, their faces pale in the emberlight. Mira clutched her staff tightly, lips pressed thin. Ysera's eyes glowed with hidden comprehension. Thorne muttered a curse under his breath.
"Names are anchors," the voice intoned. "Names burn when spoken here. Only the true remain."
Then—one of the embers grew brighter.
It floated toward Kael, orbiting him, drawing lines in the air. A sigil. A rune. It looked like fire trying to write a memory.
Kael recognized it.
His childhood name. Kael of Duskfield.
He clenched his fists.
"No," he whispered.
The ember hesitated.
"I am not Kael of Duskfield anymore."
The ember crackled. Hesitated. Then burst into a hundred fading sparks.
More embers began to glow around him—dozens, then hundreds. Each with a name he'd worn:
Kael the Orphan.
Kael the Sellsword.
Kael the Flamebearer.
Kael the Accused.
Kael the Sovereign's Bane.
Each burst as he denied them—until only one ember remained.
It floated before him, flickering uncertainly.
This one bore no name.
Only a symbol: a phoenix wrapped in chains.
Kael touched it.
And the void ignited.
They fell into a chamber of obsidian stone, molten veins glowing in the floor. It was vast, circular, ancient. Statues lined the walls—broken, faceless, watching.
Ysera stumbled, panting. "We've passed through a trial of identity. You were being tested. We all were."
Kael didn't respond. He looked down at Ashreign.
The blade now bore a new etching near the hilt—a sigil that wasn't there before. The chained phoenix.
"Someone gave me this symbol," he murmured. "Someone who knew who I'd become before I ever picked up this sword."
Mira's voice was quiet. "Then maybe it's time you gave yourself a new name."
Kael looked up at the statue directly ahead—the only one unbroken. Its hands were outstretched, as if welcoming him. Around its base, the inscription was scorched but faintly legible:
"To the One Who Would Unmake the Thrones."
Ashreign pulsed.
Kael stepped forward.
"My name…" he said, voice low, "is Kael Ashborne. Flame unbound."
And the chamber trembled as the statues began to bow.
The chamber walls groaned with ancient power as Kael's new name echoed into the stone.
Ashborne.
A name not given, but claimed.
The statues—once silent watchers of forgotten kings and shattered eras—tilted in reverence. Stone robes cracked. Dust fell like snow. The air thrummed with recognition, as though the room had waited a thousand years to bow to someone who had never existed before now.
Ysera fell to one knee, her breath hitching. "The Temple recognizes you."
Mira stared at Kael, awe mingled with fear. "That name… it rewrites fate."
Kael said nothing. He approached the dais beneath the bowing statue. Ashreign pulsed with a heat that wasn't fire—but memory.
As he stepped into the ring of molten light, the statue's hands shifted. Slowly. Deliberately.
They opened.
And in the space between its palms, a second blade formed. Forged from obsidian smoke and starlight—a twin to Ashreign, yet shadowed, colder, forged not for kings, but executioners.
Its name whispered into Kael's thoughts:
Umbracryx. The Severance.
He didn't reach for it.
Not yet.
Instead, Kael knelt before the twin swords and placed Ashreign between them. The chamber darkened instantly, as though the sun had blinked away.
In the silence, Kael spoke his vow.
"I am Kael Ashborne. Flame unbound. Sovereignty rejected. Vengeance without leash."
He pressed his palm to the stone, and blood touched the runes carved into the dais.
"I swear upon broken fire, upon forgotten lineages, and upon the ashes of my stolen past—I will not rest until the Thrones fall, until the betrayer burns, and until the chained flame is freed."
Ashreign and Umbracryx responded.
Twin auras flared—one gold-red like sunrise through smoke, the other silver-blue like moonlight through frost.
The blades did not clash.
They sang.
And the chamber roared to life, as the doors beyond the statue—untouched for millennia—began to part.
Behind them lay stairs spiraling downward into nothingness.
A voice echoed once more, now clearer. Familiar.
"You've taken the name, Kael. Now take the burden."
Kael stood, both swords hovering at his side.
"Then lead me to the one who forged my chains," he said.
And he descended into the dark.
The descent swallowed light.
Stone steps spiraled like a serpent's spine, narrowing with every turn. The air thickened, not with dust, but silence—pure, oppressive silence that clung to the skin and whispered doubts into the mind.
Kael's boots struck the stairs without echo. Mira followed behind, her breaths shallow. Ysera muttered wards under her breath, but even magic seemed muffled down here, subdued.
"How far does it go?" Mira finally asked, her voice smaller than usual.
Ysera's answer was grim. "Farther than history dares remember. This is the Vein Hollow. It predates the surface world."
Kael didn't slow.
He could feel something beneath them. A pulse—not of life, but of power buried too deep to die.
The twin blades at his side remained sheathed in light and shadow. Ashreign warmed his right, Umbracryx chilled his left. They weren't just weapons now. They were compasses, pointing him forward with every breath.
After what felt like hours, the stairs ended.
They emerged into a cavern of black glass, jagged and obsidian. No torches lined the walls, yet everything glowed faintly with a violet shimmer—like starlight trapped beneath earth.
In the center stood an altar.
Upon it, a single mask rested.
Porcelain white, lined with silver veins. Its face bore no eyes, no mouth. Only the symbol of a chained flame etched into the brow.
Ysera gasped. "The Mask of Severance…"
Mira stepped closer. "That's the mark of the Third Throne."
Kael didn't need explanation. His body tightened as if some memory—not his, but lingering within the blades—reacted to the artifact.
He approached.
As his hand hovered above the mask, the ground trembled. The obsidian floor cracked outward in a spiderweb pattern.
And a voice, far colder than before, seeped up through the cracks.
"You descend bearing names you do not understand."
The air pulsed. A figure emerged from the wall itself, shaped from shadow and silver lines, humanoid but faceless.
"You carry the flame, Kael Ashborne. But to wield it fully, you must face what forged it."
Kael drew both blades in a single motion.
Ashreign ignited. Umbracryx whispered.
"I've faced fire. I've endured chains. Show me what remains."
The figure raised an arm, and reality bent inward.
The mask lifted on its own.
And everything shattered.
The mask shattered—not with a sound, but with a sensation.
As it broke apart, Kael's vision turned white. Not blinding light, but a weightless void. He could not feel his body. The twin swords vanished. Even thought itself slowed, as though time held its breath.
Then—
Fire.
Not the chaotic blaze of destruction. This fire was orderly, cold in its precision. A forgefire. A sacred pyre.
Kael stood not in his own form, but within another. A man cloaked in golden armor, crowned in iron thorns, stared across a battlefield of glass towers and crumbling moons.
Thousands bowed before him.
Kael couldn't move. He was the man. He was the crown. The name rose, unbidden:
Vaerion. Flame-King.
A memory. Not his own.
But it burned like truth.
A voice, softer than wind:
"You were once a god, Kael. Not by birth, but by will. And they feared your fire."
Suddenly, the scene shifted.
Vaerion stood in a great hall—his hall—betrayed.
Seven thrones surrounded him.
Each ruler bore a shard of his flame, once gifted freely. Each now twisted it, corrupted it. They spoke of "balance," of "shared rule." But their eyes glinted with hunger.
He raised Ashreign.
But before he could strike—
A woman stepped forward.
Hair like ink. Eyes like dying stars.
She kissed his brow.
And drove a blade through his spine.
The vision fractured again.
Kael collapsed into darkness, breath stolen from his lungs. The forgefire dimmed.
And his own body returned.
He was on his knees, gasping. Mira knelt beside him. "Kael! What happened?"
He looked at his hands, trembling. The blades hovered near him again, as though loyal hounds waiting for command.
"I saw... who I was," he murmured. "Vaerion. The Flame-King."
Ysera's voice trembled. "That name has been forbidden for five thousand years."
Kael stood, a new fire burning in his eyes.
"Then I will un-forbid it."
He turned to the shattered mask, now dust on the altar.
"They didn't just kill a king," he said. "They stole his legacy, split his power... and made thrones from his corpse."
Mira's expression turned cold.
"Then we burn the thrones."
The wind screamed through the highlands of Draemora, dragging clouds across the sky like torn cloaks. Thunder rumbled beyond the peaks as the old stone fortress of Vhal-Teraxis emerged from the mist—withered, but alive.
Inside, in a circular chamber of darkwood and bone, seven figures sat around a crescent table.
Each bore a sigil: a broken eye, a spiral flame, a bleeding tree. Together, they were the surviving remnants of the High Council—the ones who once betrayed the Flame-King. The ones who now ruled in shadows.
They had sensed it.
A pulse. A ripple. A memory reborn.
"It's impossible," spat the Hollow Vicar, fingers drumming. "The Mask was sealed beyond mortal reach."
"Nothing is impossible," rasped the Ash-Regent. Her voice sounded like burning paper. "We sealed Vaerion's power. Not his soul."
The Blind Prince leaned forward. "Then the boy is the vessel."
They all turned as one toward the throne at the chamber's end. Empty. Always empty.
Until a flicker of shadow formed within it.
A voice emerged, older than war, smoother than silk drawn across a knife's edge.
"Kael Ashborne carries more than just memory. He bears the Reckoning."
The room chilled.
The First Thief had spoken.
He wore no face. No form. Only a hooded absence, seated where gods once feared to stand.
The Ash-Regent whispered, "Do we act?"
The First Thief replied:
"We remember what we did to a god."
"And we do it again."
Meanwhile, in the Vein Hollow...
Kael sat in silence, sharpening Ashreign by firelight. The edge glowed faintly, as if eager for blood.
Ysera traced sigils on the cavern wall. Mira packed supplies. No one spoke of the vision Kael had shared, but it hung in the air like fog.
"Where do we go now?" Mira finally asked.
Kael looked up.
"To find the Seven. To unmake them."
He rose, flame dancing in his irises.
"They sit on stolen thrones made of my past."
His voice darkened.
"I'm taking it back."