The second shard—blackened with frost—led us deeper into the Elunwood than either of us had expected.
Kael rode silently beside me, still shaken from the awakening of his powers. I didn't press. His silence wasn't fear. It was focus. He was watching everything more closely now—the trees, the birds, the subtle way the wind whispered west.
We found the entrance by accident—or fate.
Beneath a collapsed stone bridge over a dried-up riverbed, moss had grown in a perfect circle. Embedded in the center was a glyph: half flame, half snowflake.
Kael stepped forward and dropped the shard.
The moss withered. The ground trembled. And a door opened downward—into the earth itself.
---
The passage was steep, narrow, and lined with carvings worn nearly blank with age. My fingertips brushed them, and fragments of memory flickered to life in my mind:
> An oath sworn in ash.
A blade plunged into snow.
Two bloodlines breaking the seal together.
We descended until the air changed—no longer damp and mossy, but charged, like a storm waiting to crack open the world.
The temple revealed itself slowly.
Columns of obsidian wrapped in vines that refused to burn. Runes glowing dimly across the ceiling. At the center: a bifurcated altar, half scorched, half frosted.
And on the wall behind it—two names etched in ancient script:
> Isolde Vaylen.
Rosen Ashborne.
---
"This was their last meeting place," I whispered. "Where they split the Vault."
Kael nodded slowly. "So this is where it must be healed."
Between the two halves of the altar lay a third shard. Not obsidian—crystal, clear and humming faintly.
I reached for it—
—and was blasted backward by a pulse of raw magic.
Kael caught me, just barely.
"I'm fine," I hissed, wiping blood from my lip. "It's… keyed. To someone else."
"Elyra," he said.
I nodded. "Only she can complete it."
---
Far away, Elyra stood at a cliff's edge, the wind tangling her hair. She had found an old shepherd who once housed Flamebearers in secret. He had said only one thing to her:
> "Your name is a match. Stop running from the strike."
And so she stood there now, the pendant against her chest pulsing in rhythm with her heartbeat, and she whispered:
> "Then let it strike."
The wind howled. The ground beneath her glowed faintly.
And far beneath the Elunwood, the crystal shard pulsed in response.
---
Back in the temple, Kael sheathed his sword.
"We wait for her here?"
"No," I said. "We go to her. If she's ready, then the world will move. But if the Cardinal finds her first…"
He looked at me, grim. "Then no Vault will matter."
We turned to go.
But as we reached the archway, a voice echoed from behind the altar.
> "Too late."
A blast of black flame roared forward—no heat, no light—just pain.
Kael threw himself in front of me, frost erupting from his palms, forming a shield—
And then the voice stepped into view.
A man in red.
Face hidden beneath a mask of polished bone.
Not the Cardinal.
Someone worse.
> "The first Vaultkeeper," I breathed.
He bowed mockingly.
> "She is coming. You are chosen. But only one of you will leave whole."
> "And the Vault? The Vault wants war."
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