Ash and silence drifted over Solstice Basin.
The shattered remnants of the Eclipse Gate still sizzled with broken sigils. What remained of the ritual site had collapsed inward, a hollowed ruin of scorched earth and warped stone. Noctyros was gone—but the imprint of his power remained like the stench of blood on steel.
Erza stood in the center of it all, eyes closed, chest rising and falling slowly.
Leo's mark on his chest had dimmed. Not gone—but distant. Dormant.
Selene approached quietly. "You alright?"
"I will be," he said.
"Because you don't look it."
He opened one eye. "We stopped the coronation."
"We delayed it," Selene corrected. "Noctyros is still out there. The Consortium doesn't need one Gate. They've probably seeded others across the realms."
Erza looked down at his hands—burnt along the edges from channeling Leo's Fury.
"I wasn't strong enough to finish him," he said.
"You weren't supposed to," came a new voice, rough and smoke-worn. "Not yet."
They all turned.
A figure stepped from the broken treeline—tall, broad-shouldered, his hair streaked with flame-red and gray. His face was half-burned, masked with emberstone. Around his shoulders hung a cloak made of charred lion pelts, and on his chest blazed a mark no one had seen in years.
A Solar Core once tied to the royal house of Duskfire.
Kale's jaw dropped. "Is that...?"
Selene swore under her breath. "Flamefather save us. That's—"
"Ignatius Veyr Black," Erza whispered. "My uncle."
The Ash King.
Ten years ago, Ignatius had led the doomed last charge to defend the capital when the Shadow Consortium attacked. Rumor had it he survived—but went mad. Some said he'd made a pact with the Lions Beyond Flame. Others said he burned his own men alive in grief after the royal family fell.
He looked at Erza with hard, ancient eyes. "You're taller. And you didn't die. I suppose that's something."
Erza narrowed his eyes. "Why are you here?"
"To see if the rumors were true," Ignatius said. "The boy prince survived. And now you wear the mark."
"You could've come sooner," Selene snapped.
Ignatius turned his gaze on her. "I don't answer to pups playing soldier."
She bristled, but Erza held up a hand.
"I don't need another ghost from my past," Erza said. "I need answers."
Ignatius took a slow breath. "Then listen. The Gate here wasn't the first. Nor will it be the last. Noctyros is forming what the ancients called a Second Sky—an inverted mirror of the celestial realm. One where the constellations don't guide—they consume."
Kale blinked. "How does he do that?"
"By slaying the fallen stars and feeding on their memory. You felt it, didn't you?" Ignatius said, eyes boring into Erza's. "Leo's light—flickering. That's no coincidence. Noctyros hunts them."
Ryse looked from one to the other. "Wait... the actual constellations are alive?"
"Not alive as you understand it," Ignatius said. "But they exist. Beyond the Veil of Fire. They chose champions to manifest pieces of themselves. If Noctyros corrupts them all, he becomes a god who walks through shadowlight."
Erza turned to the others. "Then we stop him."
Ignatius stepped closer. "You'll need more than fury and friendship. You need legacy. And you don't even know half of yours."
Erza's eyes narrowed. "Then teach me."
A long silence stretched between them.
Finally, Ignatius nodded once. "Then meet me at Emberhold. What's left of it."
He turned to leave, then paused. "But be warned. Not everyone in the old line wants you alive. Your flame threatens old oaths. Old sins."
Then he vanished into the ash winds—leaving behind only heat and memory.
That night, the squad camped in silence.
Ryse stayed on the ridge, eyes scanning the stars. Kale curled up near the fire, drawing protective sigils into the ground even in his sleep. Selene sat beside Erza, quietly wrapping new cloth around his burned wrists.
"You really think he's telling the truth?" she asked.
Erza looked into the flames. "He's too angry not to be."
Selene frowned. "You think he wants to help?"
"No," Erza said. "But I think he wants revenge more."
They sat in silence.
Above them, the stars flickered.
And far beyond their reach, in a hollow realm of dying light, Noctyros stood before a sky of inverted constellations—where Leo's twin, the Fanged Mirror, howled without a voice.
The war had begun.
But the fire was far from finished