The days blurred after the dream.
Maerin tried to train him, but the Rune in Erynn's chest pulsed with its own will. Sometimes it listened. Sometimes it rebelled. When he reached too far, the world bent—stones cracked, light flickered, and once, a tree burst into flame without warning.
He didn't mean to.
But the Rune was always hungry.
---
Maerin drew lines in the dirt one morning—three circles, overlapping like a triple eclipse.
"There are Three Runes of Power," she said, "the core aspects of all Runeborn magic. Creation. Binding. Destruction."
Erynn frowned. "Which one's mine?"
"That's what scares me," she muttered. "Yours doesn't match any of them."
He hesitated. "What if… there's a fourth?"
She looked up sharply. "There isn't. That's just old heresy."
"But the Hollowfire King—"
Maerin stood suddenly. "He was a mistake. A cursed fusion of all three Runes. Not a fourth."
Erynn didn't argue. But the mark on his chest pulsed again.
And this time, it didn't feel hungry.
It felt awake.
---
That night, the ruins trembled.
Erynn jolted upright in his bedroll. Moonlight painted silver shadows across the stone. The forest was silent—too silent.
Then the whisper came.
"Break the seal."
Erynn turned toward the voice, heart thudding. No one was there.
"You are the vessel. You are the key."
He clutched his chest, breath shallow. The rune burned like molten iron.
A light shimmered in the vault below. He rose, moving as if in a trance, descending broken stairs to the relic chamber. The seven objects still lay in the chest. But now, the obsidian shard glowed faintly, as if stirred by unseen breath.
He reached toward it.
His fingers touched the shard—
—and the world shattered.
---
Visions consumed him.
A mountain split by flame.
A throne of black stone.
Seven figures in golden armor, screaming as they sealed a burning god behind a wall of runes.
And then… a voice not of fire, but of light.
"The Oath still binds, but the Balance fractures. One must choose. One must awaken."
Erynn fell to his knees.
---
When he came to, Maerin stood over him, furious.
"What did you touch?"
Erynn's mouth was dry. "The shard. It spoke. Not him. Something else."
Maerin looked pale. "That shard was part of the Final Rune. No one touches it. Not even me."
Erynn looked up. "I think… it remembers me."
---
Later, as dawn crept over the trees, Maerin packed hastily.
"We have to go," she said. "If the Final Rune stirs, others will come. Not just the Order."
"Others?"
She hesitated. "Runeborn who serve him. Or worse… those who serve nothing at all."
Erynn stood quietly. The rune on his chest had stopped burning. For the first time, it felt calm. Waiting.
He looked to the east, toward the hills beyond the forest.
"Where do we go?"
Maerin's answer was a whisper.
"To the ruins of Vael Aenor. Where the Oath was first sworn."
---
To be continued…