The wind screamed across the ruins like a soul unmoored, dragging with it the scent of smoke, blood, and something older—something buried deep beneath the bones of the world.
Kael stood at the edge of the chasm where the Temple of Thorns had once defied time and decay. Now, only jagged fragments of obsidian and bloodstained marble remained, half-swallowed by the earth. The destruction hadn't come from above. No firestorm or siege had done this. No, the ruin had clawed its way up from beneath, as though the land itself had rebelled.
He tightened the grip on his sword, the metal humming with a low thrum—almost like it could feel the tension in his blood. The blade, bound by the Oath of Cinders, was not just steel. It was a memory etched in fire. And memories, Kael had come to learn, could bleed.
"They never buried it," whispered a voice beside him.
Kael didn't startle. He had known she was there. Isolde moved like mist through dead leaves, pale and cold and full of secrets. Her cloak stirred as if caught in a breeze Kael couldn't feel. Her gaze was fixed on the yawning abyss below, where something faintly glimmered—a pulse of crimson, slow and deliberate, like a heartbeat buried under stone.
"What did they leave down there?" Kael asked.
"Not what. Who."
Kael swallowed. "The Warden?"
"No. Worse." Isolde turned to him, her eyes reflecting the light like mirrors. "They called it the First Cry. A god that never learned to die properly."
He didn't respond. He couldn't. The world was already too heavy with ghosts.
They descended together, following a fractured stairwell that spiraled down into the dark. The air grew dense, like molasses in his throat. The silence wasn't empty. It pressed against him, full of whispers and echoes of chains dragging across stone.
After what felt like hours, they reached a chamber veined with roots—roots that pulsed faintly, as if they fed on breath. At its center lay a stone altar, cracked and dripping with dark ichor. It pooled into patterns that looked far too deliberate.
Kael stepped forward, but Isolde caught his arm.
"Not yet."
"I need to know what's calling me."
"You already do. You just don't want to admit it."
Something flickered in Kael's chest—half memory, half instinct. The same whisper he'd heard when he crossed the bridge of bones in Velhira. The same warmth that had tried to burn him from the inside out when he touched the black mirror in the fortress of Nheran.
"Tell me," he said.
Isolde shook her head. "No one can tell you. You were forged to remember."
Suddenly, the altar's surface shifted, as though the stone breathed. And then—a voice.
Kael…
His name, spoken in tones like a thousand voices overlapping, some human, others utterly alien. The sword on his back flared, searing his skin, and Kael fell to one knee.
Visions poured into him.
A throne of bone.
A queen crowned in flame and sorrow.
A tower that stretched into the void, each level a forgotten age.
And beneath it all—a door.
A door made of living flesh, sealed by names no longer spoken.
Kael screamed. Not from pain. From recognition.
He knew that door.
He had sealed it once.
Long ago. In a life forgotten.
When the vision ended, he was alone. Isolde was gone. The chamber felt... emptier.
He stood slowly, sword in hand. The blade was no longer humming. It was silent. Waiting.
Footsteps echoed behind him.
He turned.
It was not Isolde.
It was the Warden.
Only... not quite.
Its armor was splintered, blackened by fire. The iron mask hung crooked, revealing a jawless, skeletal face. But its eyes burned with gold. Not rage. Not hate.
Duty.
"I found you," Kael whispered.
The Warden raised its broken sword.
"You left the gate unguarded," it rasped.
Kael didn't answer. The guilt had carved itself too deep to be spoken aloud.
They clashed.
The sound of metal screamed through the chamber, echoing up through the chasm. Sparks flew with every strike. The Warden moved like a revenant, tireless, inexorable. Kael, fueled by fire and memory, matched it blow for blow.
But this wasn't a duel.
It was a reckoning.
The Warden's blade bit into his shoulder, sending him crashing into the altar. The ichor spilled, hissing against his skin. But something surged within him—an old power, furious and raw.
Kael rose, eyes burning like coals.
"I remember now."
He plunged his sword into the altar. Light erupted.
Not white.
Red.
The kind of red that lives in veins and stars and old, unforgiven sins.
The chamber shook. The roots shrieked and tore away from the walls. The Warden stumbled.
Kael stepped forward, flames licking his fingertips.
"You served well," he said.
Then he ended it.
The Warden crumbled to ash, sword and all. A single whisper lingered in the air.
You are not ready.
Kael turned from the altar, from the chamber, from the darkness that now stirred freely. He didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
Because the world above was already bleeding.
And he still had promises to keep.