The sky over Dovaryn writhed like a wounded beast. Cracks spread outward from the void above the throne tower, bleeding threads of light and shadow that tangled across the city. The world was no longer whole. Time moved strangely. Sound warped. Magic bled.
And standing beneath it all, Callan met the gaze of the false Emperor.
"Tell me, demon," the thing whispered, "how many times will you kill to remain human?"
Callan stepped forward, blade pulsing faint red. "As many times as it takes to kill you."
The Emperor extended his hand.
The corpses on the streets began to stir.
Solenne cursed and backed toward Callan. "They're rising—"
"No," he said grimly. "They're being rewound."
Before their eyes, the dead bodies began to reassemble. Skin regrew. Bones clicked back into place. Eyes flickered with unnatural life. And then the first scream split the air—not of pain, but of memory.
They weren't just zombies.
They were restored. And suffering.
"They remember their deaths," Solenne breathed. "He's making them relive it."
Callan's grip tightened. "This isn't necromancy. This is something older."
The Emperor tilted his head. "I offer them salvation. You offer only fire and ruin. You are no different than I am."
Callan's answer came in the form of a war cry.
He surged forward, blade glowing, slicing through the first of the restored with a precision honed over centuries. They weren't warriors—they were victims. But they moved with a puppet's precision, fueled by an unseen will.
Solenne covered his flank, her twin sabers singing in harmony. The infiltrators followed, laying down arcs of suppressive fire and traps that pulsed with arcane disruption.
But the numbers kept growing.
Every step forward felt like sinking into a swamp of regret and vengeance.
"Fall back!" Solenne shouted. "We need to regroup!"
Callan didn't hear her.
His eyes were locked on the throne tower.
On the shadow standing atop it, arms spread like a conductor commanding a symphony of torment.
He had to reach the Vault. Before this magic consumed everything.
But first—he had to silence the choir of the dead.
They made it to the inner gates after what felt like hours of bloodshed.
Every street was a maze of pain. Magic no longer obeyed its usual rules. Spells echoed back, multiplied. Swords struck air that turned solid. It was like fighting in a dream made real.
Inside the gates, the sky was darker.
A sphere of inverted stars hung directly above the Vault.
"Reality is bending," murmured the mage with them, his eyes wide with fear. "This is a convergence point. The boundary between worlds is… thin here."
Solenne spat blood. "I don't care what it is. Can you stop it?"
He shook his head.
"But I can get you inside."
Callan nodded. "Then do it."
As the mage began his incantation, the Emperor's laughter echoed through the air, fractured like glass dragged over bone.
"You seek the Key," he said again, voice layered with something not human. "But you do not understand what you truly are."
Callan looked up at him. "I know enough."
"No," the Emperor whispered, and the world seemed to pause.
For a single heartbeat, everything stopped—air, light, motion.
And then—
The sky fell.
Chunks of shattered reality, glowing with the energy of dead stars, rained down like meteors. The mage screamed and threw up a barrier just in time, saving them from instant annihilation. Buildings crumbled. Towers exploded.
But the spell was complete.
A portal tore open in the air behind them.
"Go!" the mage roared.
Callan grabbed Solenne and leapt.
They fell.
Not through space.
Through memory.
The portal dropped them into a world not made of matter, but moments. Flashes of Callan's past flared around them. His first blood. His first death. His coronation. His betrayal. His rebirth.
And then—something new.
A memory he'd never lived.
A throne of flame.
A world unmade by his own hand.
And at its center—
The Emperor, kneeling.
"You cannot escape what you are," the Emperor's voice echoed even here. "You are not becoming the Demon General again. You are remembering that you never stopped being him."
The moment shattered.
And they landed.
The Vault of Dovaryn was not what Callan expected.
It was alive.
A sphere of molten light and ancient machinery floated in the heart of a ruined sanctum. Runes crawled across the walls like living insects. The floor pulsed with the rhythm of a dying star. And in the center—
The final Ember Key.
It floated, unguarded. Untouched. Waiting.
Callan approached, breath steady.
Solenne stood behind him, blade drawn. "It's not going to be that easy."
"No," he agreed. "It never is."
As his hand closed around the Key, the chamber screamed.
Energy exploded outward, blinding. Solenne was thrown across the room. Callan was lifted into the air.
And something inside him snapped.
Pain. Ecstasy. Truth.
The key wasn't a weapon.
It was a mirror.
And what it showed him—
Was everything.
When he opened his eyes, he wasn't in the Vault.
He was standing in a field of fire.
Thousands of corpses lay around him—soldiers, kings, innocents. And in the distance, a shadow walked toward him.
Tall. Armored. Crimson-eyed.
Himself.
The true Demon General.
Not a memory. Not a vision.
The part of him that had never truly died.
The demon stopped a few feet away. "So. You've returned."
Callan met his own gaze. "I came to finish this."
The demon tilted its head. "Then choose, Callan. Will you finally embrace me… or bury me forever?"
Callan took a breath.
And stepped forward.