The light shattered.
It wasn't an explosion, not exactly. It was a cleaving—as if reality itself had been sliced open and something deeper, older, had been exposed.
When Amina opened her eyes, she was no longer standing. She floated. Suspended in a space of nothingness… and fire.
Above her, the remnants of the Hollow Flame coiled and screamed, trying to reform. But the core—it was fractured. The power that once bound it had been pierced by a thread of memory and pain… and love.
Valec was still there, drifting nearby, pale and burning at once, his body outlined in the same grey flame that had always clung to him. But now it was thinner. Less shadow, more... truth. His pain no longer protected him. It defined him.
And in the heart of it all—Kai.
Free.
He hung in the empty light, barely conscious, but alive. The tendrils of corruption that once pierced his spirit were slashed away, retreating into the corners of unreality.
Amina reached him first.
"Kai," she whispered, her voice shaking.
His eyes fluttered open. "You… you came for me."
"You idiot," she choked, wrapping her arms around him. "Of course I did."
Behind them, the Hollow Flame hissed one last time. The shape of it shifted. Reduced now to a single ember, flickering weakly. Defeated—but not gone.
Valec floated over, blood staining his lips. "It's not dead. Just... weakened."
Amina nodded grimly. "I know. But it's separated. That's enough."
A pulse echoed through the void, and then—
The three of them fell.
Back into their bodies.
Back into the world.
When Amina slammed into the ground, the impact cracked stone. She groaned, sitting up slowly, dust and ash in her lungs. Valec landed beside her a moment later, coughing, alive. Kai hit last, more gently—as if the world itself had caught him.
All around them, the battlefield had changed.
The sky was split, half-light, half-smoke.
The fissures in the earth had stopped widening.
The flame-dwellers retreated, screeching into the shadows.
Lumeah, far on the cliff's edge, fell to her knees in relief. Ashar slumped against a pillar of fractured stone, his power flickering.
The war wasn't over—but something had shifted.
Amina stood, helping Kai to his feet.
He trembled. "It's still in me. Somewhere deep."
"But now you know how to fight it," Valec said, his voice rasping. "You don't have to face it alone."
Kai looked between them. "You pulled me out."
Amina smiled, weary but strong. "We'll do it again if we have to."
But something wasn't right.
A gust of wind tore across the field—and it carried with it a sound like chanting.
The Ancient tongue.
From the far mountains, from beyond the battlefield, a light rose. Cold. Silver. And completely wrong.
Ashar's head snapped up. "No…"
"What is that?" Amina asked.
Valec cursed under his breath. "I know that magic."
A figure emerged through the fog of war—tall, robed in ash-grey, crowned with a broken halo of bone and crystal. Eyes like twin voids.
Amina's blood froze. "Who—?"
Ashar stepped forward, limping.
"That… is the Nameless Voice. The one who corrupted the Hollow Flame to begin with. The one who whispered into Valec's past. The one who shattered Amariel's first seals."
The figure raised a single hand.
The fire died.
Completely.
All warmth vanished from the land. The flames around Amina snuffed out like candles in a storm.
The Nameless Voice spoke—and its words shattered the final silence.
"You unbound the Flame. You severed my chains. You made me free."
Amina stepped forward, anger and confusion boiling together. "You're the one behind all this?"
"Yes," it said, almost gently. "But I didn't create your suffering. I merely offered it shape."
Kai fell to one knee, clutching his chest. "He's inside me again—pressing against the cracks."
Valec drew his blade, though it trembled in his hand. "Then we break him."
But the Nameless Voice didn't move.
Instead, it smiled.
And behind it, in the distant dark, gates opened.
Not fire.
Not void.
Something older.
Something hungry.
Amina whispered, "What is that?"
Ashar's voice was hollow. "The End. The true End. He wasn't trying to destroy the world."
Valec finished, realization dawning.
"He was trying to invite something in."
The Nameless Voice raised both hands.
The sky screamed.
The earth bled.
And the world began to split.