The air beneath the mountain was alive.
It breathed—deep, slow, ancient. Each gust of heat from the stone corridors whispered in tongues long dead. Kael Azreth stood before the jagged threshold, cloak clinging to his sweat-slicked back, staring into the molten shadows beyond. Red-orange glow danced across his face, throwing his scars into stark relief.
Behind him, the remnants of his party watched in silence. They had followed him through frost and ruin, through the hushed deadwood of Wyrmreach, and now here—where the last of the Skyforged ruins smoldered like an ember refusing to die.
"Are you certain?" asked Serana, her voice barely a breath.
Kael didn't answer. He didn't need to. The bond etched into the bones of his arm pulsed with warmth—alive in a way it hadn't been since the fall of Ervas Hold. The Oathbound mark was reacting… to something buried deep within the molten veins of the mountain.
It called to him.
Not with words, not even with thoughts—but with hunger.
Down the winding obsidian path they walked, the walls slick with heat and glimmering with strange runes that pulsed faintly as Kael passed. Serana kept close to his right, hand on her sword's hilt. Mirkh, the last of the Drownedkin, brought up the rear, his gills twitching in the dry air.
"You know what they say about this place," Mirkh rasped, wiping his brow. "The Skyforged buried their gods down here. Chained 'em in fire and stone. Said they couldn't kill them, so they just… locked them away."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Good."
"You plan to let one out?" Serana asked, a sliver of steel in her voice.
"No," he said. "But I'll speak to it."
Hours passed. Or maybe it was only minutes—time bent oddly in the Deep. The heat grew worse. Armor felt like a cage, the air like boiling oil. And then, suddenly, the corridor opened.
The chamber was massive—cavernous to the point of absurdity. Pillars of molten glass reached into darkness above, the floor an ancient platform of etched basalt suspended over a lake of fire. And at the center…
A heart of flame. Beating. Real.
It hovered above a dais of black stone, suspended in midair, bound by chains that weren't chains at all, but runes—countless, endless glyphs spiraling around it like caged birds in flight. With every pulse, the chamber shuddered.
Kael stepped forward. "It's a god."
"No," came a voice from the fire.
They turned. A figure emerged—half-formed, like ash sculpted into a man. Eyes burning, no face beneath the hood. His body flickered like a dying ember, and yet the power he carried was unmistakable.
"I was a king," the figure said. "Before your kind stole the sun."
The being called itself Val'thar, last of the Ember Sovereigns. Betrayed, chained beneath the world, fed on the blood of broken oaths. And Kael… Kael was exactly the kind of thing he hated most.
"You wear the Oathbound mark like a trophy," Val'thar hissed. "As if you do not understand its cost."
Kael said nothing. He felt the heat press against his soul like a brand.
Val'thar stepped closer, the molten lake bubbling beneath them. "Swear a new one," he said. "Bend the knee, and I will burn your enemies into dust. The White Courts. The Keepers. All of them."
Kael looked into the fire and saw not destruction—but freedom.
Temptation.
He closed his eyes.
"I will not kneel," he said.
Val'thar screamed.
The chamber cracked.
Runes exploded into ash and fire, and the chains broke. The heart of flame surged—alive, furious, unbound. Mirkh was thrown into a pillar, screaming. Serana raised her blade, cursing.
Kael didn't move.
The fire wrapped around him like a lover's touch.
When it cleared, Val'thar was gone.
So were the runes.
Only the heart remained—beating.
Kael stepped forward. Placed his hand upon it.
And the mountain trembled.
A new Oath. A deeper one. Not forged in law, nor in blood—but in fire.