The skies had turned bronze.
Not from the setting sun, but from the withering breath of ancient flame. In the wake of the Stormborn Sect's obliteration, the North no longer howled—it simmered. Ruined temples lay buried beneath layers of melted stone and frozen regret, and the corpses of false prophets littered the ravines like discarded scriptures.
Yet beneath this scorched silence, something stirred.
Not far from Mount Galehowl's broken spine, a lone wanderer moved through the ash. Clad in tattered gray robes and walking barefoot across smoldering terrain, he appeared fragile. But every step he took left no imprint. Every breath he drew hummed with memory.
He was not alive. Nor was he dead.
He was the last Sentinel of the Burnt Oath.
In his chest, a shard of flame pulsed—the last ember of the Covenant Flame, the fire that once warmed the heavens before Zeirion had razed them cold.
He paused before a cracked obsidian monolith half-buried in snow. Upon it, scorched runes danced—Zeirion's mark, scorched into stone not as a warning, but as a reminder.
The Sentinel bowed his head.
"It begins again," he whispered.
And the wind carried his voice across dimensions.
Far from the North, in a realm lost between stars, Zeirion sat atop the Terrace of the Watchless Moon. A hundred floating mirrors of memory revolved silently around him, each replaying whispers of the realms—movements of armies, forgotten prophecies, and the breathing dreams of those who feared his return.
He sat still.
But his mind was aflame.
Aralya approached from the crystal corridor behind him, her long silver hair brushing the floor like soft rainfall. In her hand, she held a scroll. Bound in phoenix sinew and sealed with a sunless wax.
Zeirion's gaze flicked to her. "The first of the Shattered Thrones moves?"
She unsealed the scroll with a silent spell. "Yes. The Crimson Syre of Nahlveth. He's declared a blood rite. All living descendants of the ancient sovereigns are being hunted."
Zeirion's eyes narrowed. "He means to erase the last pieces of the Old Order before I gather them."
"He knows what's coming," she replied.
"Then he is wiser than most."
Zeirion stood, the mirrors around him shattering and dissolving into stardust. He extended a hand. In a shimmer of folded space, Eclipsion appeared—his blade—its edge humming with a hunger that had only grown since the Stormborn cleansing.
"I gave the realms peace once," he said, voice a vow wrapped in thunder. "They repaid it with betrayal. I will not offer it again."
Aralya placed a hand on his. "Not peace, Zei. Justice. Our kind of justice."
Behind them, the stars blinked once—and a constellation changed shape.
Somewhere, an ancient bell that hadn't rung in five epochs gave a lonely, terrible chime.