The ambush came just before dawn.
No horns. No warning.
Only the snap of a branch in the woods behind us—and then silence so complete it made the wind feel like a lie.
Kael stood first, sword already drawn. I rose beside him, glyphs under my skin flickering to life, the pendant on my chest pulsing in warning.
Then they came.
Six cloaked figures. Masks of bone and silver. No banners. No emblems. But I didn't need them.
They were the Cardinal's.
And they weren't here to talk.
"Stay behind me," Kael said.
I didn't listen.
Two charged. I twisted the fire glyph across my wrist, and a wall of flame erupted between us—brief, bright, and scorching enough to stagger them.
Kael moved like water—blade flashing, deflecting steel with brutal grace. But they weren't normal soldiers. Their strikes were coordinated. Ritualistic. Each movement deliberate, timed. Trained not to kill, but to extract.
They weren't here to end us.
They were here to take me.
---
One lunged from the side, fast enough that I barely turned in time. The blade nicked my shoulder, and immediately, my vision blurred—poisoned steel.
Kael saw red.
He roared—not shouted, roared—and something changed.
The air went cold.
Frost crackled across the ground beneath his boots. His eyes—usually ember gold—flashed a pale, glacial blue. The man who'd always burned like fire... now commanded ice.
The nearest attacker froze mid-strike—literally. Ice climbed up his legs, over his chest, until he shattered like a statue struck with a hammer.
Kael stared at his own hands, stunned.
"I didn't—"
"You did," I said, breathing hard. "You're like me."
He looked at me. "No. I'm opposite you."
---
We fought together then, a dance of fire and frost. I scorched the blade arms of one attacker as Kael froze the weapon mid-swing. He deflected a staff aimed at my ribs and shattered it into splinters. Together, we were balance made fury.
When the last attacker fell—alive, but unconscious—we stood alone, the clearing still smoldering with ash and rimed with hoarfrost.
Kael dropped to one knee, panting. His eyes returned to gold. "What... was that?"
I knelt beside him. "You're not cursed, Kael. You're chosen. Like me. Like Elyra."
He looked haunted.
"No," he whispered. "I've always feared the power inside me. I thought it was rage. Madness."
"It's your legacy," I said. "It's time you stopped running from it."
---
Across the forest, miles away, Elyra Ashborne jolted awake in a dusty hayloft—gasping, sweating.
She had seen them.
The flame. The frost. The mask of bone.
But more than that, she saw two paths:
1. One where she runs, and they fall.
2. One where she steps into the fire… and everything breaks.
Her hands trembled.
The pendant around her neck—the twin to mine—glowed faintly, as if answering its sister across the woods.
"I'm not ready," she whispered.
But the Vault whispered back:
> "You are already chosen."
---
Back in the clearing, I searched the attackers' belongings.
A single item stood out: a small obsidian shard, like the one I used to open the Vault—but this one was blackened with frost.
Not fire.
Another key.
Another vault?
Kael looked at me. "There's more, isn't there?"
"Yes," I said. "And we've only just begun."
---------------------------------------------------