The northern winds howled like ancient beasts as Kael and his army crossed into the frozen lands of Vareth. Endless plains of white stretched in every direction, broken only by jagged glaciers and mountains buried beneath centuries of snow.
This was the final place. The edge of the world. The resting ground of the Ninth Chain.
Mira rode beside him, her breath steaming in the frigid air.
"The cold is unnatural," she said. "Even fire struggles to breathe here."
Kael said nothing. The eighth chain pulsed faintly on his arm, sensing the presence of its sibling hidden beneath the ice.
Days passed in bitter silence. Soldiers died in their sleep. Others vanished into the mist, their screams never heard. The snow buried everything quickly, as if the land itself rejected intruders.
At last, they reached the Tomb.
It stood not as a temple, but as a wound in the world. A massive crevice lined with walls of crystal and bones of giants. The entrance was marked with runes that glowed with celestial light. Ancient magic pulsed from below, deep and unwelcoming.
Kael stepped forward alone.
"I go where only gods dare," he said. "None follow."
Mira remained at the entrance, eyes dark with worry, but she obeyed.
Inside the tomb, silence ruled. The deeper Kael descended, the more time unraveled. He saw flickers of himself in the ice—reflections from different paths, different choices. One where he died a boy. One where he never lost his family. One where he became a savior instead of a tyrant.
He ignored them all.
At the heart of the tomb, the chamber widened into a vast cathedral of frozen light. Suspended in the air above a pedestal of obsidian floated the Ninth Chain. It burned with starlight and shadows, humming with a voice not of this world.
Below it stood a creature, tall and unshaped. It bore no face, only a mask of silver. Its body shimmered between forms, always shifting, never stable.
"You are not ready," it spoke. "This chain is the breath of gods. Take it, and you sever yourself from humanity forever."
Kael gripped Ashveil tightly.
"I severed my humanity the day the world made me watch it burn."
They clashed.
No flame. No steel. The battle was fought in will, in vision, in soul. The creature showed Kael what he had become. The lives he crushed. The blood on his hands. The cost.
Kael did not flinch.
He walked through fire. Through guilt. Through the mirror of his sins.
And reached the chain.
It coiled around him like a crown made of stars.
The Ninth Chain was his.
Above, the sky cracked. Across the continent, prophets screamed. Temples collapsed. The gods, wherever they had hidden, felt their throne stolen.
Kael stepped out of the tomb, no longer mortal.
He looked at Mira.
"It is done."