The first village went up in smoke in less than an hour.
No soldiers. No warning. No survivors.
Just charred earth, melted stone, and the scent of salt and sorrow.
The reports came from the western border—scouts whispering of a woman cloaked in mourning veils, walking barefoot across the ruins, weeping as the fire followed her footsteps.
She didn't raise her hands. She didn't speak.
But every time she cried, something burned.
They called her The Weeping Flame.
And she was heading east.
Callan stood over the map in what remained of the old war room. The capital was still in the process of rebuilding, its halls patched with mismatched stone, its banners torn but flying.
But the room was full again—with new generals, liberated governors, and rebels-turned-administrators.
"She's already destroyed three villages," Lysander said, slamming a scroll onto the table. "And that's just what we've confirmed."
"She doesn't command an army?" asked Governor Harlan of the North. "No siege weapons? No war beasts?"
"Just herself," Solenne said grimly. "And enough fire to erase a fortress."
Callan's eyes narrowed on the map. "She's not attacking randomly."
"What do you mean?" Harlan asked.
Callan marked a triangle between the three points of destruction. "She's drawing a perimeter. A shape. Closing in on something."
"Or someone," Lysander muttered.
Callan looked up. "She's coming for the shards."
The capital wasn't the only place where the shards had been buried.
After the throne was destroyed, Callan ordered every fragment collected, sealed in containment chambers forged by the Mage-Forgers of Galdwyn. The remaining pieces of the original nine shards—shattered, unstable, dangerous—were under constant watch.
But even sealed, the shards whispered.
And someone like her could hear them.
"We need to intercept her before she reaches the inner ring," Callan said. "If she reaches the archive vault—"
"She won't," Solenne interrupted. "Because we'll be there first."
Callan nodded slowly. "Then we move tonight."
The ride west was fast and silent.
Callan, Solenne, and Lysander traveled light—just the three of them, cloaked and veiled, cutting across burned fields and empty roads.
The signs were everywhere.
Ash that didn't blow away.
Trees weeping molten sap.
A town where every single mirror had cracked down the center.
"She's not just using fire," Solenne said, crouching over one of the burn marks. "This is shard energy. Woven into flame."
Callan touched the edge of the scorched ground. The shard inside him stirred—just enough to taste the resonance.
"She's bleeding one of the shards directly," he murmured. "But how?"
Lysander's expression darkened. "You remember what the Emperor's scholars called it when a shard and a host merged too deeply?"
"Symbiosis," Callan said.
"No," Lysander corrected. "They called it The Womb of Wrath. When a shard isn't just carried… it's born again. Inside the host."
Callan stood. "If that's what she's become, then we're not fighting a sorceress."
"We're fighting a living shard," Solenne said.
They found her at dawn.
In a ruined chapel at the heart of a dead village.
She stood among the pews, veils trailing, flames dancing gently around her bare feet. Her hair was silver—not with age, but with heat—and her face was streaked with soot and tears.
She didn't turn when they entered.
"Callan," she whispered. "At last."
He didn't flinch. "You know me?"
"I was you," she said. "Before the fire. Before the throne. Before I stopped begging the world to be kind."
Callan took a step forward. "You've killed innocent people."
"No one is innocent," she said calmly. "Only sleeping."
Lysander drew a dagger. "We don't want to fight you."
She smiled. "Then you should have stayed in your castle of bones."
The flame erupted.
It wasn't fire like Callan remembered.
It sang.
It sobbed.
Each wave of flame was a scream of loss, a cry of rage, a death unspoken. The Weeping Flame moved through it like wind through smoke—untouchable, sorrowful, furious.
Callan raised his shard-wrapped arm. Shadows met fire.
The clash sent a shockwave through the chapel, tearing stone from wood.
Solenne leapt into the fray, blade flashing with enchanted speed, her movements a blur of silver arcs and wind strikes.
Lysander flanked, throwing twin mirrored blades that reflected not light, but sound—each strike ringing with memories meant to disorient.
But she fought like grief itself.
Unpredictable. Relentless. Bottomless.
And just when Callan thought they had her cornered—
She screamed.
Not in pain.
In birth.
And from her body erupted wings of flame and shard, coiling into shapes not meant for the living. Faces formed in the fire. The faces of those Callan had killed. Soldiers. Civilians. The old him.
"You can't destroy me," she said, walking through their attacks. "Because I am what you left behind."
Callan stood his ground. "Then I'll finish what I started."
With a roar, the Annihilation Shard awakened.
It didn't blaze.
It collapsed.
Reality folded inward around Callan as he focused all his energy into one perfect strike—not of death, but release. A wound in the very rules of power.
He aimed not at her body.
But at the shard inside her.
And he cut it free.
The fire vanished in an instant.
The weeping stopped.
And The Weeping Flame collapsed in the center of the ruined chapel, sobbing—not from power, but from being human again.
Solenne approached her carefully.
"Who are you?" she asked.
The woman looked up, eyes empty. "I… I don't remember. Only that I was hurting. And the fire offered to make it stop."
Lysander collected the freed shard, sealing it inside a prism of null-light.
Callan knelt beside her. "Rest now. You're free."
"No one's ever free," she whispered. "But maybe… I can forget."
They left the chapel in silence.
The fire was gone.
But the war had just evolved.
Because now they knew—shards weren't just weapons.
They were seeds.
And the world was still full of soil.