They emerged from the fading light of the Echoing Bastion into an unfamiliar landscape.
Gone were the scarred ruins and ancient sigils. In their place stretched a valley shrouded in gray mist, thick as memory, silent as death. Jagged mountains bordered the horizon like obsidian fangs, and trees — if they could be called that — hung limp and brittle, made of ash.
Kael stepped forward, boots crunching on cracked black soil. It felt dry and hollow, as if the ground itself had forgotten how to sustain life.
Juno knelt beside one of the trees, touching its bark.
"It's not dead," she said softly. "It never lived."
Erisen scanned the sky — a sheet of motionless cloud, colorless and oppressive.
"We're not in a realm," he murmured. "We're in a scar. A place burned out of existence but left behind anyway."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Why bring us here?"
As if answering, a whisper rippled through the mist — not from around them, but beneath.
Juno turned toward Kael. "Something's moving below."
Kael didn't speak. He simply reached down, pressed his hand to the soil, and listened.
What he felt wasn't movement. It was breathing.
Then came the voice — soft and feminine, layered with distortion and loss.
"You walk with the weight of what they buried. But will you carry what they left behind?"
A figure stepped through the fog. At first glance, she looked like a young girl — pale-skinned, hair the color of soot, with eyes that shimmered between silver and coal. But as she drew closer, Kael realized she wasn't truly alive. Her skin cracked like drying clay, and her form flickered as if caught between realities.
The girl smiled without warmth. "You're the one who broke the silence."
Kael didn't flinch. "Who are you?"
"I was once Lyra," she replied, voice echoing with a thousand others. "Now, I am many."
She raised her hand, and the mist parted to reveal dozens of figures standing in the valley — children, men, women, beasts, all dulled and cracked like statues made of dust.
"Once, we were promised rebirth. We waited. We starved. We forgot our names," Lyra said. "Now, we are the Children of Dust."
Juno stepped forward. "What do you want?"
"To see if the new bearer of the Ashen Mark understands what it costs to ascend."
Kael met her gaze. "I've already paid."
"No," she whispered. "You've only begun."
The ground split.
A deep, gaping wound tore open beneath Kael's feet. He tried to leap away, but shadows reached up like tendrils and dragged him under. Juno shouted, lunging after him, but the crack sealed shut before she reached it.
Kael fell.
Not through space — but through memory.
He landed in a burned field under a red sky. And around him stood hundreds — no, thousands — of Kaels. Versions of him, twisted by regret, broken by different choices. One had lost Juno. One had never escaped the pit. One knelt in chains, eyes hollow.
A voice surrounded him — his voice, warped and distant.
"You think you carry strength. But strength is made from loss. Let's see if you can survive your own."
One of the alternate Kaels stepped forward. His eyes glowed not with power — but resentment.
"You left us," he said, drawing a blade made of ash. "You rose while we died."
The others echoed in chorus.
"You were the chosen."
"You became the Creed."
"We were nothing."
The first one attacked.
Kael blocked with his forearm, feeling the sting of familiarity in the swing. The alternate Kael moved just like him — fought like him — but with none of his restraint.
Kael ducked a slash, swept his leg, and sent the copy flying into the dust. But two more stepped forward.
This wasn't a trial of combat.
This was condemnation.
He fought them all.
The furious. The fearful. The broken versions of himself who had given up, turned bitter, or died screaming. Each blow he delivered felt like rejecting a piece of who he could've been.
But he didn't falter.
"You're not me," he hissed, shattering the ribs of a snarling Kael who had sacrificed his allies for power.
"You're not the one who chose to rise."
The sky split open above him, and a voice returned — not his own this time, but Lyra's.
"Then rise, bearer. And don't forget those who didn't."
Kael surged upward, pulling himself out of the dust-world with sheer will. His body reformed through smoke and flame, the Ashen Mark glowing brighter than ever — but altered.
Not in color. In depth.
The mark now curled around his spine, inscribed with symbols of names — names he didn't recognize, but felt burning in his soul.
When he emerged from the earth, Lyra waited.
"You didn't kill them," she said softly.
Kael was panting. Bloodied. But standing. "They were me. I just needed to remember why I kept going."
Lyra nodded. "Then you are ready to bear more."
The valley pulsed. The Children of Dust knelt, not in submission — but in silent accord.
"We will not rise with you," Lyra said. "But we will follow. And when your light reaches the threshold… we will answer."
Kael bowed his head slightly. "Then I won't let you fade."
The mist began to rise again, drawing the Children into its folds, but not in erasure. In preservation.
Juno and Erisen reappeared beside him as the land began to shift again.
"Another trial passed," Juno murmured. "Barely."
Erisen glanced at Kael. "They weren't testing your power this time. They tested your conviction."
Kael nodded once. "Good."
He looked ahead as a new path formed — a spiraling bridge made of fractured moonlight.
"What's next?" Juno asked.
Kael didn't answer. He walked forward.
Whatever waited at the end, he'd face it.
Not as a chosen one. Not as a survivor.
But as the sum of every broken version of himself that still refused to die.
End of Chapter 37