Before fire consumes the world, it first learns to breathe beneath the ground.
The hour struck midnight.
And with it, the silence shattered.
From the outer wall of Lowend, fire bloomed.
A signal — no longer veiled in whispers or threats. The purge had begun.
Ash stood on the highest point of the old chapel ruins, the collapsed steeple offering a view of the city's underbelly. Smoke curled into the black sky like a crown of ruin. The outer ring of the slums — the Fringe — had already started to burn.
He didn't flinch.
He simply breathed.
Down below, the first wave of soldiers poured in — helmed brutes in crimson leather, blades drawn, shields locked. Not elite knights. No — these were cullers. Executioners meant to clear the "vermin."
But they didn't find rats.
They found teeth.
Ash's forces struck like phantoms. Every alley was a trap, every crumbling rooftop a perch for ambush. Kael led the first assault — blades flashing in the darkness, a blur of steel and silent fury. Arrows whistled. Smoke bombs burst like thunder.
Screams followed.
Silna dropped from a window above, landing on one of the Fang commanders with a spinning kick that shattered his helm.
"We're not running," she hissed. "We never were."
In the tunnels beneath the chapel, Darius commanded from the war room — a place marked by chalk maps, candles, and hastily drawn runes. Every movement of the enemy was tracked. Every loss recorded.
"We hold them here," he barked to the runners. "Do not let them cross the Greyline."
But then… the earth trembled.
A dull, ancient sound rose from the deep.
Like breathing.
Ash heard it first.
He turned slowly, sensing the shift — not in the battle, but in the bones of the city itself. There was a rhythm in the stone. A thrum in the soil.
As if the world remembered something it had long buried.
He dropped from the steeple and made his way down, past crumbled prayer rooms, into the sealed chamber he'd forbidden anyone to enter since the rebellion began.
A shrine of forgotten gods.
And something beneath it.
The runes along the walls flickered — not from flame, but from memory.
Ash stepped forward, his sword humming.
The vision hit him like lightning.
He stood in a battlefield of ash — a different world.
Armies of iron-clad wraiths clashed under a red sky. At the center stood a figure clad in black, his face hidden behind a war mask, his blade crackling with voidfire.
Ash stumbled back.
That figure was him.
Or had been.
His breathing sharpened.
Memories surged — of a vow sealed in blood, of a force older than the kingdoms above, of a curse awakened not by hate… but by purpose.
His voice was a whisper in the dark:
"I remember now."
And the runes ignited.
Above, the fighting intensified.
Darius's line broke at the west canal. The Black Fangs surged in. Fire spread faster.
But before they could breach the second ring…
Ash returned.
He walked through the smoke like a ghost reborn — his cloak burning at the edges, his sword alive with forgotten light.
Soldiers paused. Some dropped their weapons.
Because what stood before them was no man.
It was a storm wearing human skin.
With a single gesture, Ash sent a pulse through the air — the closest soldiers staggered, fell to their knees. Kael watched in awe as shadows twisted around his commander, obeying him like loyal hounds.
"He's not just fighting back," Kael whispered.
"He's becoming what he once was."