They walked for three days through the charred valleys of the Northreach, where nothing grew and nothing dared follow. Kaelith said little. Drex said even less.
On the fourth day, they reached the remnants of a village swallowed by time and fire.
Stone walls stood half-melted. Roofs caved inward like broken ribs. The well had collapsed into itself, and ash covered everything like a shroud. A child's toy—a wooden stag—lay half-buried beneath scorched earth.
Kaelith crouched beside it. "Do you know this place?"
"No," Drex said, though the air felt heavy with memory. "Should I?"
"It was called Emberwyn. Thirty-seven years ago, it was wiped from the maps. Officially? Bandits." She gave him a long look. "In truth? It was the empire's first test of soulfire."
Drex felt the sword hum faintly at his side.
"I've seen the aftermath of war," he said. "But this—this is silence."
Kaelith nodded. "Because it was designed to be. The ritual that fed your blade—this is where it began."
She led him to a collapsed chapel at the center of the ruins. The altar inside was broken, but beneath it, a sigil had been burned into the stone—a sun split by a serpent. The mark of the Old Concord, the forgotten pantheon the empire had tried to erase.
Drex ran a gloved hand over the mark.
And then the memories came.
Not his.
Another's.
---
A Vision: Blood and Echoes
He stood not in Emberwyn, but in a vast, black chamber lined with chains of light.
A voice whispered:
> You are not the first.
You will not be the last.
You are the vessel. The price. The key.
He turned—saw hundreds of bodies suspended in the air, veins glowing red, eyes hollow.
And in the center, a throne made of bone and iron. Upon it, a being wrapped in shadow and flame.
It looked at him.
> You opened the seal, child of war.
Now you carry the fire.
Now you carry me.
Drex screamed as the vision tore away—
---
—and he collapsed against the chapel wall, breath ragged.
Kaelith stood over him, unshaken. "You saw him, didn't you?"
"The thing inside me," Drex rasped.
Kaelith's voice was quiet. "Its name is Rathmaelos. An echo of the First Flame. A being that fed on war long before our kings carved thrones from the dead. When the empire tried to harness it, they needed vessels. Living hosts."
He looked up, eyes burning. "So I was... chosen?"
"No." She met his gaze. "You were used. Betrayed. Just like the others. But unlike them... you survived."
Drex forced himself to his feet. The blade at his side now pulsed with rhythmic heat, not hunger.
Rathmaelos had spoken. Not in command—but in recognition.
"What happens now?" he asked.
Kaelith turned toward the mountains in the east.
"Now we hunt the architects of your curse. The ones who built this empire atop corpses and lies. And we start with the Ebon Circle."
---
That Night – Beneath a Hollow Sky
They made camp beneath the roots of a fallen sky-tree. Drex did not sleep—he couldn't. Instead, he sat in silence, sharpening his blade with a whetstone that never dulled it.
Kaelith tended a small fire with stones that burned blue. "What are you thinking?"
He stared into the coals. "That I was never meant to survive."
"None of us were," she said. "But we did. And that makes us dangerous."
He glanced at her. "You speak like a rebel."
"I speak like someone who's seen the veil pulled back."
Drex hesitated. "What did the Ebon Circle take from you?"
She didn't answer at first. Then, softly: "A brother. A name. And the future I was supposed to have."
Drex nodded once. The silence between them now held weight—not avoidance, but understanding.
He looked to the stars.
One of them flickered and died.