The Soulforge cracked.
A rift split the battlefield as Ember's soulflame struck the High Regent's time-carved blade. Reality bent. The air shimmered like glass—scenes from the past and shards of future possibilities spiraled outward in bursts of unstable magic.
For a breathless moment, all was still.
Then—
The High Regent screamed.
Not in pain, but defiance.
She hurled Ember back with a twist of her blade, severing the timeline around them, creating a loop of burning afterimages. But Ember—now merged with Kael—moved between the threads, dodging strikes that hadn't yet been made, countering spells before they were cast.
"How long can you hold it?" Kael asked inside her, watching her soul unravel at the edges.
Ember gritted her teeth. "Long enough to end this."
Their fusion wasn't perfect. Kael's memories clashed with her instincts, but together, they were something no Flameborn or Magus had ever been. A being of both rebirth and reckoning. A soul reforged.
The High Regent staggered, blood seeping from her temple. Her time-warping aura flickered.
"You were never meant to be," she rasped. "You're an abomination."
"No," Ember said, stepping forward, flame pulsing with raw defiance. "I'm evolution."
She struck again. This time, she didn't aim to kill—she aimed to separate.
The spell slammed into the Regent's chest, ripping through the spellwork that had made her immortal. Time snapped around her like shattered glass. Her blade dropped from her hands. The centuries she had stolen began to bleed out of her.
But Ember paid a price.
The soulflame inside her flared wildly, out of control. Kael's presence screamed, beginning to break apart. The merger couldn't hold.
Lysra ran to her side. "You have to stop—before it consumes you!"
Ember fell to one knee. Her hands trembled. The phoenix crown cracked.
Kael's voice was fading.
"You have to seal me away, Ember. Before you lose yourself."
Tears mixed with flame.
"No. We end this together."
"Then do it fast."
Behind them, the rift above the Soulforge began to widen, birthing something worse—something that had fed off Kael's magic for centuries.
A soul-eater. A god forgotten. And it had just awakened.