In the skies above Eldaris, where the stars once sang the stories of fate, a new constellation blazed to life..an unnatural curve of violet stars shaped like an open eye.
It was visible from every realm...Sylvaran's groves, Ironspine's peaks, the spires of Solhaven, and even the bloodlit volcanoes of Netherhollow. And when the Eye of the Echo King opened, no one slept.
Dreams became visions. Visions became commands.
And across Eldaris, people began to hear a voice not their own.
"I was the first light. I shall be the last truth."
In Solandria's High Chapel, King Alden Solvar stood before the sacred mural of the Four Kings—Ardent Kael's companions who united the world through sacrifice and valor. Today, however, the wall cracked.
Not from time, not from battle...but from within.
A fissure split the center of the mural, revealing something buried behind it. Elira arrived moments later, breathless from sprinting through the inner palace.
"You felt it too?" she asked.
Alden nodded. He gestured to the growing crack. "The wall was sealed centuries ago, after Kael's death. But something behind it… wants to be seen."
With a careful touch of his sword, Alden tapped the wall's center.
It crumbled to dust.
Behind it was a hidden mural; older, darker, and forgotten. Five figures stood there, not four. One cloaked entirely in shadow. The Fifth King.
At the mural's base, a script revealed itself in golden ink:
"Before unity, there was betrayal. Before kings, there were echoes. He who fell shall rise again... not to conquer, but to remind them of what they chose to forget."
Alden whispered, "Velkaron was one of them…"
Elira turned to him. "And if that's true, we've been fighting only a part of the truth all this time."
That same morning, in the heart of Sylvaran, Queen Selene and Kaelen gathered with druids, sages, and mages within the Emerald Enclave, a living council of the oldest elves.
A massive tree known as Starbark bloomed with inverted petals—white on the inside, black on the outside. That was not natural.
"It has begun," murmured Grand Druid Elaris, voice shaking.
Selene frowned. "What has?"
"The Convergence," he said. "A cycle foretold in only one place: the Prophecy of the Fifth Flame."
He opened a scroll sealed in starlight. It showed a circle of five lights, four bright, one dim.
Each cycle, the dim one grew stronger until the others were eclipsed.
"Velkaron is not simply returning," Elaris continued. "He's always been fated to rise once the echoes of the first unity returned. We, in defeating the demons and sealing the Shadow, woke the final gate."
Kaelen's fists clenched. "We were the key all along."
Selene turned toward the withering tree. "Then we must choose what story we tell next, before Velkaron writes it for us."
In the depths of Ironspine, Freya stood inside the Coreforge—once used to craft weapons for the Godswar. Now it trembled under heat that was not hers.
Myrin, her trusted runecaster, staggered into the forge with a scroll he had pulled from the Vault of Ancients.
"Your Majesty," he gasped, "we found the Echo King's original name."
Freya raised an eyebrow. "Not Velkaron?"
"No," Myrin said. "That was the name given to him after exile. His true name was Koryneth..... the Flame of Wisdom. The firstborn of the Creator's blood."
Freya looked toward the Coreforge's molten heart. "So he wasn't just cast down. He was betrayed."
The ground beneath her groaned. Molten cracks began to spread.
And from within the flames, a whisper slithered forth:
"You wear my strength as steel. But you forget whose fire forged it first."
Freya turned to Myrin. "He's speaking through the forges."
Myrin nodded. "He's claiming every relic, every rune, every bloodline."
In the obsidian halls of Netherhollow, the demon clans were restless.
The Council that Nyxara helped forge now splintered under the whispers of Velkaron's Heralds,... beings of molten flesh and memory that walked through walls and bled silver fire.
Some demons began kneeling to these beings, not out of fear, but out of recognition.
In the shadows of the council chamber, General Vharzak addressed the uneasy lords.
"The Echo King does not seek dominion," he said. "He seeks remembrance. We were not born of malice, but molded by the lies of gods."
The youngest demon, a girl barely older than a hatchling, spoke with eyes glowing white:
"He was our ancestor, wasn't he?"
Vharzak nodded. "Not just yours. Everyone's."
Back in Solandria, Alden stood in his father's crypt. Beside him knelt Elira, whispering prayers not to the Creator, but to Ardent Kael: the Unifier.
"I need to know what you would do," Alden said aloud. "Would you fight this… echo? Or would you listen?"
The wind shifted. A memory stirred.
A single word echoed in Alden's mind, not from the Creator, but from Kael himself.
"Balance."
He opened his eyes, heart pounding. Elira looked up.
A glowing symbol had formed on the crypt wall; five intersecting circles, forming a star.
And beneath it, a new message carved itself into the stone:
"He was not the enemy. He was the silence we chose."