The war drums had not yet begun but the silence was deafening.
In the high tower of Xarion's last standing bastion, wind shrieked through shattered stone. The old banners fluttered like dying flames. Beneath them, Zephran stood at the war table with a letter in hand its seal already broken, its words stained with threat.
Across from him stood Ravik, pale and quiet, and Allen, silent as a tombstone.
"They've made their move," Zephran said, placing the letter down with trembling fingers. "The Five Continents have united… under Barron."
No one breathed.
"He's taken the Empty Throne of Mytherra," Zephran continued. "And now he rules Virehn, Solenna, Kaos, Thundraal… all of them."
Allen didn't flinch. Only his fingers moved, tracing the cracks in the table like they were veins of the world itself.
"They want one thing in exchange for peace." Zephran's jaw tightened. "You."
Allen blinked, slow and detached. "Alive?"
"Alive for the trial. Public. Bloody. Ritualistic," Zephran said. "They want to crucify you before the world. Then burn your soul into a SERRA weapon."
Ravik scoffed. "Even Barron couldn't make that work."
Zephran shook his head. "With the Five backing him? He might."
He unfurled a scroll, revealing a map marked in urgent red. "We strike first. Kaos is our best chance. Their capital is weak, their command fractured. If we claim it, we get a foothold. Then Solenna. We force them to split."
"Divide and conquer," Ravik muttered.
"Exactly."
Zephran pointed again. "The others will have to pull troops from Thundraal and Virehn to reinforce their east. That'll buy us weeks maybe months."
But Allen didn't speak.
He stood from the table slowly, staring out the cracked tower window. The sky burned red above Xarion, like a wound.
"Something's wrong," he whispered.
Zephran frowned. "You're unsatisfied?"
"Not with the plan," Allen said. "With the world."
The wind outside deepened, howling through the spires like a scream trapped in time. Ravik stepped toward him. "What are you feeling?"
Allen didn't answer.
His eyes drifted—past the sky, past the war, past the room.
Go to her.
A whisper. Not from outside. From within.
"Mira," he murmured.
The ruins of the old cathedral stood like bones in Xarion's western quarter—forgotten by kings and untouched by war. Once a holy place, now only one soul lived within it.
Mira.
Allen walked through the grave of arches and shattered bells as if sleepwalking. The candlelight glimmered in spirals. The air smelled of wax, old stone… and something unnamable.
She sat in the center of a glowing circle of candles. Pale. Blindfolded. Barefoot.
"I was waiting," she said without turning.
"You always are," Allen answered, stepping inside.
"I heard the war coming. It walks like a man now. A man with a crown of silence."
"Barron."
Mira bowed her head. "That name no longer fits him. He's not a man. Not anymore."
Allen knelt beside her. "You said once you could see the place where fire forgets itself. Where Barron hides."
"I did. And I can." She raised her hands, trembling. "But it will hurt."
"I'm used to pain."
Mira touched his temples.
"Then see."
The world vanished.
Barron, cloaked in stillness, sat on a throne of shattered faces his own face forgotten beneath a crown forged from twelve SERRA cores. One pulsed like Ikki's. Another whispered Allen's name.
Behind him, a Gate.
Not made of stone or metal but of hunger. Blacker than the void.
Allen stood across from him in the vision. But he was no longer a boy.
He was chains.
Living chains, binding stars and strangling suns, eyes hollow, soul gone.
The Iron Chain moved not as his weapon, but as his master.
Allen gasped and ripped himself from the vision. Mira collapsed, bleeding from the nose.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I showed too much."
Allen staggered. "That was… the future?"
"No," Mira said, her voice shaking. "That's what he wants you to become."
Allen clenched his fists. "Then I need to find that gate."
"You will," Mira said. "But you won't get there alone. You'll need one of the Three Keys to open it."
Her voice dropped to a whisper. "One of them… is hidden in Kaos."
Allen's eyes widened. "Then Zephran's plan…"
"Was fate," Mira said. "Nothing around you is coincidence anymore, Allen."
He rose slowly.
"Then I go with them. Not for war."
He looked back at her.
"For the Key."