Chapter 10: The Revenant's Path
Theme: Vengeance and Redemption / The Tether of Fate
The last of the echo-spawn crumbled into smoke, leaving the temple in a silence so complete it roared. The walls of Echofell trembled faintly, then stilled, as if exhaling a final breath. The Echo Shard, now bound to Kael, pulsed quietly in his palm, no longer humming with potential but simply waiting.
Vaelen knelt, inspecting the dissolving corpse of one of the creatures.
"They weren't born of this world," he muttered. "More like… torn from an alternate one."
Seraeth cleaned her blade without a word. Her face was grim, eyes constantly scanning the temple's shadows.
Kael remained still, watching the last remnants of mist coil upward toward the open sky. His heart beat to the rhythm of the shards—four of them now. Fire, Water, Wind, and Echo. And with each, the pull in his chest grew stronger.
It wasn't just magic.
It was destiny.
---
Far across the continent, beneath a sky the color of blood and sorrow, a woman walked a shattered road.
Her cloak was made of torn veils and broken mirrors, each piece showing fragments of other lives—none of them hers. Her boots crushed bones into dust with each step. Where she walked, grass blackened. Birds silenced.
She did not speak, because she had no voice of her own. Only those she'd stolen.
The Mirrorborn.
Created by the Queen of Glass. Forged from a sliver of Kael's essence during the brief moment he touched the Echo Shard. She bore his face, his power—but none of his restraint.
And she was coming for him.
She stopped at the edge of a cliff, eyes locked on the horizon.
In her mind, she saw him.
Kael.
The original.
The flawed.
She smiled.
"I'm coming home."
---
Back in Echofell, the group prepared to leave. The temple had begun to decay, the magic that held it together dissipating now that the Echo Shard was gone.
"Where now?" Kael asked, adjusting the shard-harness beneath his cloak.
"To the Ember Vale," Vaelen replied. "The fifth shard. The Heartfire. But that's… complicated."
"Why?"
Seraeth's face darkened. "Because the Ember Vale is cursed. No one who enters leaves unchanged."
"And the Hollowed King?" Kael asked.
"He's moving faster," Vaelen said. "He knows you're gathering them. He's sending things… older than death."
Kael nodded, jaw set. "Then we don't wait. Let's move."
---
They traveled northward through the Weeping Hills, where the wind carried whispers and the trees bled sap that glowed faintly in the moonlight. Villages lay abandoned, their hearths cold, doors left open like mouths frozen in silent screams.
On the third night, they were ambushed.
Not by beasts or shadowspawn.
But by Revenants.
Kael sensed them first—echoes of people long dead, walking on borrowed time.
Vaelen stood fast, muttering incantations in the old tongue. Seraeth moved like silver fire, cutting down two before they even reached her.
But Kael was paralyzed.
One of the Revenants had taken the shape of his father.
"Kael," it said, voice like a cracked bell. "You left us. Burned us. You carry their power, but you don't understand it."
Kael hesitated.
Then the Echo Shard flared, and a thought not his own whispered: "Do not fear them. They are only memories pretending to be truth."
Kael thrust his hand forward, fire leaping from his palm. The Revenant screamed and vanished.
The others fell quickly, but their appearance had rattled them.
"They're testing you," Vaelen said afterward. "The more power you gather, the more the past tries to break you."
"They're not real," Kael muttered.
"But the guilt is," Seraeth added quietly.
Kael looked away.
---
They reached the Ember Vale at dawn three days later.
The land before them was cracked and scorched, smoke rising from vents in the earth. Pools of molten rock glimmered beneath jagged cliffs. Rivers hissed as they passed over hot stone.
But it wasn't dead.
There was life here—twisted, fire-born, whispering from behind obsidian trees.
Seraeth's hands hovered near her blades.
Vaelen whispered an incantation of protection.
Kael stepped forward.
The Ember Shard, the one that had chosen him first, pulsed once—then stilled. It recognized this place.
This was home.
---
They descended into the Vale, shadows slithering across the ground like coiled serpents.
In the center stood a great furnace-temple, ancient and half-collapsed. Flames burst from its windows every few minutes, sending shockwaves across the valley.
"It's there," Kael said. "The Heartfire."
Vaelen frowned. "And something else."
Inside, the air was thick with ash and old screams.
They passed murals burned into stone—stories of the First Bearer of Flame, the one who lit the sky during the War of Sundering.
At the center, atop a dais of cracked obsidian, rested a floating heart-shaped shard.
It burned without smoke, pulsing with fury.
As Kael stepped forward, the flames parted.
But the ground trembled.
And from the fire rose a figure.
Not the Hollowed King.
Not a Revenant.
But… her.
The Mirrorborn.
She wore his face. His voice. His power.
Kael stared.
"What… what are you?"
She smiled. "I am you. The better you."
Seraeth moved to strike—but the Mirrorborn flicked a hand, and she was thrown back.
Vaelen's spell fizzled.
Kael stepped forward, fists clenched.
"I won't fight you."
"You will," she said. "You already are."
She drew twin blades of glass and flame. "One of us walks out of here with the Heartfire. The other dies."
The shard behind her pulsed. Waiting.
Kael ignited his hand, the Ember Shard blooming like a sun.
And the battle began.
---
They clashed in a storm of flame and light.
Every blow Kael struck, she mirrored.
Every spell, every strike, every breath—matched.
But then the Echo Shard whispered again: "She is not real. Only reflection. Find the flaw."
Kael feinted a strike and whispered a memory—a fragment only he knew.
"I never forgave myself for letting my sister burn."
The Mirrorborn hesitated.
For a moment, her face flickered. The glass cracked.
Kael struck.
A wave of fire, infused with all four shards, slammed into her.
She screamed—a sound like shattering worlds.
And she exploded into mirror-dust.
Silence returned.
---
Kael collapsed beside the dais.
The Heartfire floated gently to him.
It was warm.
It welcomed him.
He reached for it.
The final shard.
And it chose him.
Five.
Now only one remained: the Crownshard.
But as Kael rose, he realized something:
The Mirrorborn hadn't been a creation of the Queen of Glass alone.
She had been nurtured by someone far worse.
The Hollowed King.
And now he knew Kael was ready.
Because now…
He would come himself.
---
End of Chapter 10