The throne room shuddered beneath their feet—each breath from the Pale Flame peeling back the layers of the world like it was made of paper and ash.
Kael didn't blink.
Didn't breathe.
Because what stared back at him from that molten throne was not just an enemy.
It was the incarnation of every prophecy twisted, every prayer left unanswered, every god who had once dared to dream of control and failed. The Pale Flame's form rippled—a man of fire, but bound by void. Skin like lava, voice like a choir of screams underwater.
And he was smiling.
"You dare bring steel to my sanctuary?" the Pale Flame hissed, voice cracking the stone beneath Kael's boots. "You dare bring hope?"
Elyra stepped beside him, her hands blazing with raw celestial fire—blue-white, pure and deadly. "We didn't bring hope," she said. "We brought the end of you."
Her words echoed, not through the chamber, but through the veins of fate itself.
Kael's blade shimmered with something old. Not magic. Not steel.
Memory.
The sword had tasted war before. It knew what it was to bury kings and slay tyrants. But this... this was different.
He stepped forward.
"I've seen the bones of empires, Pale Flame," Kael murmured. "And yours will burn just like the rest."
And then the world detonated.
—
Steel met fire.
Magic collided with wrath.
The throne room became a battleground of legends.
Elyra danced like a fallen star—her flames carving runes into the air, each one a prayer and a curse in the same breath. Every flick of her wrist split the atmosphere open, sending waves of heat and sorrow through the chamber.
Vespera?
She vanished.
Then reappeared behind the Pale Flame—daggers drawn, slicing through the air with surgical violence. Shadows clung to her like a lover, and blood followed wherever she stepped. But the Pale Flame was no mere king.
He was a godkiller, born of forgotten fire.
With a gesture, he shattered a pillar into dust. With another, he turned Kael's sword to molten slag.
And Kael smiled.
Because this was always going to end in fire.
He hurled the ruined blade aside and summoned the other thing he had been running from all his life—his bloodline.
The Starborn magic within him cracked open like a dying sun.
Every line of his skin lit up with silver flame, and the Pale Flame—paused.
"You shouldn't have awakened that," the god snarled.
Kael's voice was calm. Final. "Then you shouldn't have taken my brother."
The room shattered.
Not physically—but metaphysically. The Veil above them splintered, showing brief flashes of other realms, other selves. Elyra's eyes widened. She saw herself, but darker, winged, laughing with blood on her lips. Vespera saw a version of herself with a crown—and corpses beneath her heel.
Kael saw nothing.
He had burned away every future but this one.
—
They fought for hours.Not in real time—but in sacred time, where moments stretch like aeons.
And slowly, the Pale Flame bled. Silver from Kael's fists. Blue from Elyra's wrath. Black from Vespera's betrayal.
"I am older than stars!" the Pale Flame screamed.
Kael pressed a hand to the dying god's chest and whispered, "And I am the fire that comes after."
The Pale Flame screamed—
—and the throne room exploded in white light.
—
Silence.
Ash.
Nothing but breathing and the taste of cinders in the air.
Kael stood, barely. Elyra was on her knees, trembling, smoke rising from her back. Vespera leaned against a shattered column, blood dripping from her mouth.
They had won.
But not one of them felt victorious.
The room had stopped screaming.
And in the silence that followed, Kael reached for Elyra.
Their fingers touched.
And the world exhaled.