The Velmoran Forest had once whispered in hues of green and gold, its ancient trees cradling life even after the world had broken. Now, it stood muted beneath a sky thick with ash, every branch brittle, every breath laced with the taste of soot.
Kael pulled his scarf tighter around his mouth as the ashstorm thickened. Gray snow fell sideways in the wind, cloaking everything in a veil of sorrow.
"Visibility's dropping fast," Arlin warned, squinting ahead. His usual confidence wavered in the storm's chaos.
"We'll need shelter soon," Talia murmured, one hand pressed to the hilt of her blade. Her eyes glinted with that eerie foresight she rarely explained.
"There," Nyra pointed to a slope where shattered stone structures jutted from the earth—ruins, long buried beneath moss and time, now bared by the storm's fury.
As they descended into the hollow, the ash quieted. The world hushed. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Kael stepped into what once might have been a temple or watchtower. Symbols—half-erased by time—glimmered faintly on the walls. The air was thick with old magic, brittle and brittle and waiting.
And then it came.
A pulse.
A shudder in the stone beneath his feet.
He staggered. The ash around him swirled upward, drawn into a spiral that no wind could create.
"Kael?" Sylas called out, voice distant and muffled.
But Kael was already gone—pulled inward, downward.
Into the vision.
He stood in a field of bones. Not bleached by time, but charred—cracked open by heat that lingered.
Above him, the sky was aflame.
In the distance, a silhouette stood atop a mound of ash. A child. Hair made of smoke, eyes glowing like coals. Around its neck, a pendant bearing the same rune etched into Kael's arm.
"You carry the ember of the end," the child said, voice both his and not his. "But do you know what you burn for?"
Flames roared around the child's feet—but it did not burn. It welcomed the fire, fed it.
Kael tried to speak, but his throat was ash. He reached forward—and saw his own hand wreathed in flame. Not destroying. Shaping.
The child smiled.
"You are the beginning, too."
Kael collapsed to his knees, gasping as the vision dissolved.
The others surrounded him. Sylas' hand gripped his shoulder. Nyra's bow was half drawn. Talia knelt beside him, concern flashing in her eyes.
"What did you see?" she asked softly.
Kael looked up at the ruin walls. The symbols now burned faintly, echoing with a heat he felt beneath his skin.
"A memory," he whispered. "Or a warning."
And as he rose to his feet, the runes pulsed once more.
Something beneath the ruin had stirred.
And it knew his name—not as a warning… but as a welcome.