While Liora debated with her counterpart, the Shardveil fully ruptured. Worlds began to overlap. Storms of memory raged across cities. People woke up remembering two different lives.
Kael — long dead in this world — returned in another.
Elara's spark flickered into a version of her who had never taken the Flame, now alive in two realities.
The Spiral War began — a war not of soldiers, but of truths. Two Flames. Two histories. And only one could remain.
Unless Liora found a third way.
Liora sought the Forge Eternal, a mythical place said to be older than even the Skyborn — a place where reality could be rewritten. She was joined by her mirror-self, Blackflame Liora, who hoped to merge the worlds into one perfect order.
But when they reached it, they found something unexpected.
A child.
Made of starlight and ember.
It spoke no words, only feelings — and revealed that the Flame had never been just power. It was the will of the cosmos, choosing champions to keep balance across time.
Now it was torn.
In the heart of the Forge Eternal, Liora and her Blackflame self clashed. Not with blades — but with visions.
Each brought forth their world's memories, their people's stories, their scars and hopes. The Forge pulsed with them. Reality trembled.
And then Liora made the impossible choice:
She took her mirror-self's hand.
> "Not one of us must win. We must become."
The two Lioras merged, not into a compromise — but into a new being: The Flamekeeper Beyond.
Neither tyrant nor idealist.
A balance.
With the new Liora at the helm of the Forge, she cast a song into the Shardveil. Not to destroy it, but to harmonize it.
Worlds began to settle.
The Flame across all timelines sang in unison. Not identical — but aligned. Iridia returned to one form, but now enriched with echoes from many pasts.
Elara reappeared — not as a ghost, but as a guide, alive again in a world where she had never perished.
The Ashborne King? Gone… but a single flower of black flame bloomed at the center of the Forge, as if to say: nothing is ever truly erased.
Centuries have passed since the Harmonization of the Shardveil.
Liora the Flamekeeper is now a myth, spoken of in hushed tones beside campfires and beneath star-wrought domes. The Flame no longer blazes — it hums quietly inside every living thing.
But deep below the capital of Virellium, a secret library stirs:
The Archive Beneath Time, built by the Skyborn before time's first ticking.
And it has just opened its last page.
A name glows upon it — a name long erased:
> Azhirion — The Flamebreaker.
The world is peaceful… but not curious.
Generations born into stability have forgotten the wildness of fire. But three young friends — Saen, a blind chronoscribe, Mira, a flame-dancer orphan, and Tovin, a former Archive apprentice — discover the reopened Archive.
Inside is a memory that speaks in flame and ash.
They learn of Emberfall — the theoretical end of time, when the last fire goes out and all stories die.
The Archive reveals a vision:
Azhirion, born from the ashes of forgotten timelines, is returning. Not to conquer — but to erase the concept of memory itself.
The trio sets out across the world to find others who still remember the true Flame. But they find horror.
Whole cities now forget themselves every seven days.
Towers crumble with no knowledge of why they stood. Rivers flow upward. Names vanish from stone.
These are the Memoryless Lands — places where Azhirion's influence has taken root.
At the heart of one forgotten kingdom, they find a burning child, alone, singing a tune none of them know… but all of them feel.
Mira begins to hear voices in her dreams. Saen begins to forget his own name.
Desperate for answers, the trio searches for the descendants of the ancient flamebearers — the Emberborn. These scattered lineages trace back to Elara, Liora, and even Valinor.
They find them hidden beneath a collapsed mountain: an order of monks who no longer use names, only songs to identify each other.
These Emberborn reveal the terrifying truth:
> "Azhirion was not destroyed. He was stored — inside the last echo of the Skyborn Flame.
But time forgets. And forgetting… is his release."
Saen realizes the Archive is not a book. It is a lock.
And now it is
As the group journeys to the Molten Horizon — the last known remnant of pure flame — the sky begins to turn crimson.
People begin losing not only memories but emotions. Laughter vanishes. Then fear. Then love.
In a forgotten crater in the Obsidian Steppes, they see a form rise: tall, cloaked in starlight dust, skin like smoldering coal, eyes made of void.
Azhirion has awakened.
He does not speak.
He devours the act of remembrance