The skies above Eldoria had never looked so alien.
Aelric stood at the jagged edge of the Stormfell Plateau, his cloak whipping in the wind like a war-banner. The Heartstone pulsed in the pouch at his side—its warmth steady, urgent. In the distance, the sky had torn open. A rent of voidlight cracked the heavens, a yawning mouth of darkness spilling legions of shadowborn across the earth.
They had reached the threshold of war.
Liora joined him, her armor reforged in the forges beneath the Celestial Spire, glinting gold and crimson. Beside her, Thalin tightened the clasp on his robe, runes dancing like fireflies across the fabric as he whispered to his star-gem familiar.
"We don't have the numbers for a direct assault," Thalin muttered. "But if we can break their anchor—if we destroy the riftstone—they'll lose cohesion."
"And if we fail?" Liora asked, drawing her twin blades with a hiss of steel.
Aelric's eyes flared with starlight.
"Then we fall with fire and fury. But we do not run."
The Advance into Shadow
Their warband was small: remnants of old alliances. Sky-riders from the cloud cities of Aerthane, their wings shimmering with arc-light. Guardians of the Verdant Circle—druids who whispered to trees older than memory. And the Fangs of Ardros, beast-riders from the southern highlands, howling their war songs into the coming storm.
Together, they advanced across the blood-cracked plains, wind carrying the scent of ash and ozone.
Then the ground buckled.
Shadow-things erupted from the dirt like burrowing worms—half-formed, oily silhouettes with too many limbs and mouths. Screams split the air.
Liora lunged into the chaos, blades igniting with radiant fire. Her strikes were surgical, graceful—a whirlwind of purpose. Thalin floated into the air, arms wide, casting a sphere of starlight that burned away the shadows as they writhed and screeched.
Aelric ran into the fray, sword drawn, its edge gleaming with celestial energy. He was no longer the hesitant boy from Brindlewood. He moved like the storm—swift, relentless.
Every swing of his blade cleaved through shadow. Every heartbeat brought clarity: the fire within him was not a curse. It was a call.
The Riftstone
By nightfall, they reached the base of a shattered hill, beneath which the rift pulsed like a wound in the world. At its heart stood the Riftstone—an obsidian spire taller than any tree, encased in a cage of bone and voidsteel. Around it, thousands of shadowborn waited—silent, watching.
Aelric crouched behind a rocky outcrop beside his companions.
"Too many," Liora whispered. "We'll be slaughtered."
Thalin stared at the Riftstone. "Unless… we can collapse the leyline beneath it. Sever the energy it feeds on."
"That would destroy everything in a mile radius," Aelric said.
"I know."
A grim silence passed.
"We can do it," Aelric said finally. "We push forward, reach the Riftstone. I'll draw their attention. Liora, cover Thalin while he channels the disruption."
Liora gave him a long, haunted look. "That's not a plan—it's a sacrifice."
Aelric's smile was sad. "Sometimes, light only shines through when something breaks."
Ember and Eclipse
The battle began at dawn.
The warband charged the valley under a sky that bled black and violet. Banners snapped. Warhorns howled. The first wave of shadowborn met them like a tidal wave of teeth and rage.
Aelric surged into the front line, his sword bursting with starlight. He leapt onto a rearing beast of bone and shadow, driving his blade through its skull in a flare of white fire. Around him, warriors clashed and screamed and died. The land shook with fury.
Thalin and Liora made their way through the chaos, ducking beneath clawed limbs and leaping over broken ground. Behind them, the Riftstone loomed closer.
Aelric saw them vanish into the fog of war, then turned his fury on the enemy. His amulet blazed. The Heartstone pulsed. The flame within him rose like a tide.
He lifted his sword high and roared, "For Eldoria!"
The sky answered.
Starlight fell like meteors, slamming into the battlefield in arcs of destruction. Shadowborn screamed and disintegrated. The Riftstone cracked at its base.
Aelric collapsed to one knee, blood in his mouth. "Just… a little longer," he murmured.
Sacrifice and Severance
At the foot of the Riftstone, Thalin placed both hands to the earth, channeling energy into the buried leyline. His mouth moved in a steady chant, eyes rolled back in concentration. The ground began to glow.
"Almost there!" he shouted.
Liora stood guard, cutting down anything that came near. Her armor was streaked with ash and gore, her breath ragged. She turned—too slow.
A shadow-creature rose behind Thalin, black blades glinting.
"No!"
She hurled herself at it, her shoulder catching the blow meant for the mage. The blade plunged through her side.
She gasped—but held on.
Thalin finished the spell. A tremor cracked the hill. The leyline ruptured.
The Riftstone screamed.
With a thunderous explosion, the spire shattered into black dust, and the sky above it tore apart. Light cascaded downward. The shadowborn writhed, shrieked—and vanished.
Silence fell.
Aftermath
Aelric staggered across the battlefield, limbs heavy, vision swimming. He found Liora slumped beside Thalin, barely conscious.
"Liora," he whispered.
She looked up at him, blood staining her lips. "Told you… it wasn't a plan."
He knelt beside her, hands glowing as he poured healing light into the wound. Her breath steadied, and she gripped his wrist.
"I'm not done yet," she rasped. "We still have a world to save."
Thalin smiled, weary and pale. "That was only the first rift."
Aelric looked to the sky.
More rifts shimmered in the distance—smaller, but multiplying. A constellation of wounds across the world.
He rose, sword still glowing, heart thundering.
"No more running," he said. "We end this."
The Rising Storm
That night, as they buried the dead and tended the wounded, a stranger approached the camp.
She wore armor of black stone, her eyes silver as the moons.
"You are the Starborn," she said to Aelric.
He nodded warily. "Who are you?"
"I am Kaera of the Outer Reaches. The Void King awakens beneath the Obsidian Deep. You have sealed one rift. But his prison cracks. And when he rises… all of Eldoria will fall."
She held out a scroll wrapped in dark leather.
"Come to the Ruins of Kareth. There is more you must learn. And more you must sacrifice."
Aelric took the scroll.
And so began the next journey—into a world of buried gods, lost realms, and enemies older than the stars.
The fire within him had only just begun to burn.
~to be continued