When Kael emerged from the Hollow Deep, the sky was red.
Not the red of dusk or firelight, but the red of something bleeding. The clouds churned like a boiling wound above Elarion, and thunder rolled like the war-drums of giants.
They had only been below for a day.
But the world had changed.
And so had Kael.
A Glimpse in the Mirror
Raen stood beside a broken fountain, watching the sky.
"You touched the Crown," she said without turning. "I can feel it in your voice."
Kael didn't answer.
His shadow moved differently now—flickering, bending unnaturally. Something had stirred in him, and though he hadn't claimed the Crown, the contact had been enough.
Visions lingered in his head: a city burning, a gate of bone opening beneath the ocean, his face in the smoke, crowned and cursed.
"I didn't take it," he muttered.
"You didn't have to," Raen whispered. "It took you."
The Prophets of Stone
Nira returned from scouting with grim news.
"The capital is sealed. The Wardens have activated the Stone Choir."
Ash frowned. "Those monks who sing people to death?"
"They don't just sing anymore," Nira said. "They chant the names of enemies. And the walls respond."
Kael gritted his teeth. "They expect us."
"They fear you," Iris corrected. "The Echo King's words are already spreading. The cults are calling you 'The Hollow Flame.' The Crown calls you a heretic reborn."
Kael glanced at the horizon. The capital sat like a tomb of light in the distance. Somewhere inside, the Ashen Gate awaited.
And beyond it?
He no longer knew.
But he had to find out.
Into the Wild
The road to the capital was no longer a road.
It was a graveyard.
Villages once loyal to the rebellion now stood silent, hollow-eyed villagers watching from behind shuttered windows. Some had been marked by the Brand of Silence—lips sewn shut with glowing wire, eyes dim with fear.
They passed a tree with bodies hanging from it—Wardens, strung by their own cloaks.
Kael knelt and studied the sigil burned into one of their foreheads.
A circle inside a flame.
Ash swore. "That's the symbol of the Dawnless Pact. Cultists. They're not hiding anymore."
"They're making a move," Kael murmured.
Raen nodded. "They know the Gate is close. And they want to be the ones standing when it opens."
The Memory Field
Two days from the capital, they crossed a place not on any map.
The trees twisted. The air shimmered like heat, though the breeze was cold. And when they passed beneath the branches, Kael saw things—not illusions, but echoes.
Himself. Younger. Bloody. Screaming.
His mother. Laughing in a garden, moments before being dragged away.
The burning of the orphanage.
The moment Iris joined him.
The first time he killed.
He staggered, hand against a tree trunk, gasping.
"Memory field," Iris whispered. "The last protection before the Ashen Gate. It shows you everything you've buried."
Kael turned.
Behind him, Ash was weeping silently, fists clenched.
Raen knelt, whispering apologies to people long dead.
Even Nira flinched at ghosts no one else could see.
Only Iris stood steady—her eyes glowing faintly, lips tight.
"I've already made peace with my past," she said softly. "It's the future that scares me."
Kael looked into the blur of trees and flame ahead.
"That's where we're going."