The sky cracked.
Above the Vault of Embers, where once only ruins and ash remained, rifts split through the heavens like wounds. From them poured the dark army of Vaeroth—shadows wrapped in flame, monstrosities fused from forgotten myths, and creatures born of nightmare and god-flesh.
Serayah stood at the center of the crater, cloaked in golden flame, her eyes twin suns against the encroaching void.
"They come," Ashar said beside her, blade drawn, the edge glowing with the same divine fire she'd gifted him moments before.
"Let them," Serayah replied, raising her hand. "This is where it begins."
The Flame-Chosen
Power radiated in waves from the circle around her.
Kai—his hands brimming with white-blue energy, stood with a grimace of focus. His flames had fused with his Timecraft, giving him bursts of accelerated sight. Already, he tracked the rift formations.
Amina had not yet fully recovered, but her voice whispered incantations under her breath. Her bond with the elemental spirits surged, the azure flame of her soul laced with ice, wind, and whispering echoes from the ancients who now walked with her.
Ashar, ever the warrior, glared at the sky, muttering prayers to no god in particular. His flame pulsed in his sword arm, linking him to Serayah like a heartbeat.
And Lucien… Lucien had not moved since the sealing.
He stood alone, his eyes closed, the sigil on his back blazing like an open wound.
But he felt everything. Every flicker of Vaeroth's will. Every heartbeat from Serayah. Every lie his past self once believed unraveling.
He opened his eyes, finally.
And joined the front line.
First Contact
From the skies, the first of Vaeroth's horrors descended.
They had no names. Just shapes—some of scales and smoke, others with wings that screamed, and some that dripped starfire like venom.
Kai was the first to strike.
A temporal rupture sliced the air. He blinked through space, striking three creatures in a flash of silver and flame before reappearing beside Ashar.
"Stay ahead of the timeline," he muttered.
Ashar grinned. "That's cheating."
"Use it."
Amina raised both hands and the earth responded. The spirits of the land itself surged upward—molten stone shaped into spears, wind slicing across the battlefield, water exploding into shards of ice as she screamed.
Then Serayah moved.
Not as a mortal.
But as Flame itself.
Her body dissolved into golden fire and reformed in the heart of the enemy. She raised her hands—two burning arcs—and clapped.
A wave of divine heat rippled out, evaporating shadow beasts like dew under the sun. The ground melted into glass beneath her, and the heavens screamed.
But Vaeroth only laughed.
The Counterstrike
From the largest rift, a shape emerged.
Tall. Armored in obsidian. Eyes voids within voids.
Vaeroth's general.
An Echo of the First God, born of silence and vengeance—Cindrael the Dreadflame.
"You desecrate the will of Flame," he said as he stepped onto the field. "And now it shall consume you."
Serayah turned, her fire hardening around her shoulders into a mantle of light.
"I am the will of Flame."
Cindrael attacked.
And the battlefield split.
Chaos Across the Fields
Ashar and Kai found themselves separated, fighting shoulder to shoulder against flame-born giants that roared in ancient tongues.
One struck Ashar, flinging him into a cliff. Blood ran from his brow—but he got up. Always.
Kai turned the air into blades, time slowing around his enemies in bursts. He moved like lightning between moments—until he froze.
A vision gripped him.
Serayah. Falling.
And Lucien… dying.
"No," he gasped. "Not here. Not now."
The Duel of Fire and God
Serayah met Cindrael in the center of the battlefield.
He fought with a blade made from the last sun of a dying star.
She fought with bare hands, wrapped in divinity.
Every strike shook the world. Every blow cracked the foundations of the Vault. They moved too fast for mortal eyes, their battle written in fire and raw will.
"You cannot save them all," Cindrael snarled. "You cannot defy him."
Serayah bled golden light from her side. "Then I'll burn trying."
She hurled herself forward, punching through the dark star blade, catching his helm in her hand, and roaring, "YOU. WILL. NOT. TOUCH. THEM!"
The helm shattered.
But so did the light.