The skies above Eldaris darkened, not with storm or ash, but with silence.
Across the realms of Solandria's golden fields, Sylvaran's shimmering canopies, Ironspine's iron-clad mountains, and the molten spires of Netherhollow, a chilling stillness took hold. Birds ceased their flight. Rivers paused in their flow. Time itself seemed to hesitate.
In the center of the world, where the light of the Five converged, a great rift cracked open in the sky.
From it fell a creature once known as a king, a figure once noble, once mortal, now corrupted beyond recognition.
The Herald of Velkaron had returned.
He landed in the Valley of Thorns, a forgotten land scarred by the First War. Once a place of ancient beauty, it had long since been reduced to jagged stone and poisoned soil.
His name had been Vaelen, an elven champion who fought beside Thalorien in the age before memory. He had given his soul to the Echo King to save his people. Now, he served only remnant will.
Where he stepped, memories fractured. Trees forgot how to bloom. Wolves forgot how to hunt. People forgot their own names.
He carried no sword, yet entire towns fled before him.
He did not speak.
He unwrote.
Atop the battlements of Solhaven, King Alden felt the ripple before the news arrived.
A scout's raven landed with wings made of fading ink. Elira unsealed the scroll and read it aloud.
"The sky opened in the Valley of Thorns. A creature has emerged. It is unraveling the land. Even time bends around it."
Alden nodded slowly. "The first of Velkaron's champions."
General Lysara stepped forward, armor already fastened. "Orders, Your Majesty?"
"Summon Selene and Freya," Alden said. "And prepare the Skyguard. We move at once."
In Sylvaran, Queen Selene stood in the Moonwell when the call reached her. A vision overtook her—of Vaelen as he once was, and what he had become.
"I knew him," she whispered. "He fought beside my grandfather. He taught the First Songs. Now he is a hollow."
Kaelen appeared, cloak soaked in rainless dew. "Then we do what the songs always taught us. We bring back the light. Or we silence the dark."
Freya Stonefist rolled up her battle maps.
"Myrin," she said, "activate the Stormforged Battalion. We're descending into cursed land, and I want every rune alive."
She strapped on her new gauntlets and gifts from the Runefather himself, carved from star-iron and lined with ancestral bone. Her people were ready to follow her into the end of memory.
And they would.
The armies met at the Valley's edge, where the land refused to remember what it once was. Buildings were half-formed. Mountains shifted between past and present. Soldiers forgot why they marched not until Alden walked among them, the Fifth Spark burning in his chest.
They remembered.
"Hold onto who you are," he called. "Your name, your heart, your purpose. The Herald's power lies in your forgetfulness. Defy him by remembering."
The soldiers shouted their names aloud as they marched. A wall of will against the tide of oblivion.
The battle began at dusk.
Vaelen stepped forward from a fog of unmaking. His body was crystalline and rotted, stitched with the essence of broken timelines. His voice came in fragments:
"This is not… your world… anymore…"
He raised his hand. The sky fractured.
But Selene stood first, channeling the Song of Beginning of melody that bound the mind to memory. Where she sang, the fog recoiled.
Freya struck next, her gauntlets shattering stone and ether alike. Each punch reminded the land of what it was, solid, strong, unyielding.
Kaelen dueled the Herald in blade and thought, each strike countered by broken visions of the past.
And Alden…
Alden called upon the Fifth Spark.
He stepped into the storm of shattered thought and memory.
And he remembered Vaelen.
Not as the Herald.
But as the man who had sung lullabies to scared elven children. Who once rode beside Ardent Kael. Who had chosen to sacrifice everything for peace.
"Vaelen," Alden said gently. "You gave yourself for love. Let me give you peace."
The Spark flared.
The Herald staggered.
And for one brief second… he wept.
Then his body cracked, and the shattered memories within him poured into the sky like light and ash.
With a final whisper, "I remember" Vaelen was gone.
When the battle ended, silence fell once more.
But it was not the silence of fear.
It was the silence of mourning. Of memory restored. Of choices redeemed.
The army stood still, then dropped to their knees, not in victory, but in respect.
Alden raised his sword.
"This is only the first," he said. "Velkaron sends pieces of himself ahead to test us. To tear away what we were."
He looked to the heavens.
"But we will not forget. We will not fade."
And far above them, in the rift where Velkaron watched unseen, something hesitated.