The wind that passed through the highlands was no longer alive. It no longer sang or danced
through the trees. It dragged itself through scorched fields and blackened bones like a breath that
refused to exhale. Ash clung to the air, and the sun remained hidden behind a sky of heavy gray.Skarn moved silently, his wings tucked close, claws digging into the cold earth as he pulled forward
with mechanical resolve. His fur was coated in a fine dusting of frost and soot, and his eyes—usually
sharp, alert—seemed heavier than ever before.
Beside him, Karnis walked with equal silence. The humanoid feline's movements were ghostlike—
fluid but deliberate. His hairless skin shimmered faintly in the gloom, and his long tail flicked
absently behind him. Around his fingers, the faintest trace of his telekinetic aura pulsed violet. He
hadn't said a word in nearly two hours.
Torian was gone.
Not dead. Not fallen.
Just… gone.
Still floating somewhere within the Spiral Core, suspended in light and memory, unreachable.
Neither of them knew how long his transformation would take. Only that the world couldn't wait.
⸻
They had left the Spiral Core five days ago. The descent had changed nothing. The moment they
emerged back into the waking world, they knew where they were heading: east, toward the old
roads, toward the broken lands that used to be Torian's home.
And what lay there now?
A village ruled by fire. A prison disguised as memory. The last place Torian had called his own—
taken, defiled, and reshaped in Malvorn's image.
The closer they came, the worse the air tasted.
Karnis stopped near the edge of a collapsed ridge, his clawed feet crunching brittle stone
underfoot. Below them stretched a field of dead totems—huge black spikes rammed into the ground
like stakes, each wrapped in chain and sigil.
False spirals.Dozens of them.
Each one radiating a lingering pulse of ember-black energy.
Skarn snarled, low and menacing, the sound echoing across the slope like distant thunder.
"This was sacred land once," Karnis said.
Skarn didn't answer.
Karnis turned his feline eyes toward the horizon. "He'll return. But we need to be alive when he
does."
Skarn's head dipped. Agreement. And grief.
They continued.
⸻
By nightfall on the seventh day, they reached the edge of the valley.
Karnis slowed as he stepped through a ruined archway—once a wooden gate, now melted and
twisted into slag. He placed a hand on the stone and closed his eyes.
"I can feel it," he said softly. "Everything that happened here. It's… wrong."
The village no longer resembled the one in Torian's memories.
Instead of humble thatched rooftops, there were blackstone towers etched with spirals of fire.
Instead of markets, there were shrines to Malvorn built from the bones of fallen warriors. Instead of
laughter or singing, there was silence, broken only by the low chants of flame-bound children.
At the center of it all, a spire reached into the sky—newly constructed, its top wreathed in fire that
didn't warm. At its base, villagers knelt, heads bowed, bound by glowing chains around their necks
and wrists.
False devotion. Forced worship.Karnis's violet aura flared briefly around his hands.
"Let me burn it," he hissed.
Skarn stepped forward and growled—a low, warning tone. Not yet.
They waited in the shadows just beyond the outskirts, silent observers. Karnis seethed. Skarn
paced.
But still—no Torian.
⸻
That night, they made camp near a stone wall that had once been a granary. Skarn curled into
himself, eyes still open. Karnis leaned against the charred remnants of a tree and watched the stars.
"What if he doesn't come back?" Karnis asked the sky.
No answer.
Skarn shifted but said nothing.
"I've lived two centuries," Karnis continued. "I've seen false kings, burning skies, gods that bled. But
I've never seen someone like him."
He turned his eyes downward.
"I just hope he remembers who he is when he returns."
⸻
It happened just before dawn.
The sky split.
Not with thunder.Not with fire.
But with light.
A spiral of gold carved itself through the clouds, silent, radiant. The air grew still. Even the flame on
Malvorn's spire flickered and bowed.
Skarn rose first, ears high, body trembling with sudden alertness.
Karnis stood, his breath catching in his throat.
From the heavens, a shape descended—not falling, not crashing.
Lowering.
As though the world itself was welcoming it back.
The spiral burned brighter as the figure descended, cloaked in light, flame wrapped around its form
like robes.
When it landed, it made no sound.
No crater.
Just presence.
The villagers stopped chanting.
The chains cracked.
The false flame dimmed.
Torian stood at the heart of the village.
For a moment, no one moved.
Torian's feet touched the earth as gently as a feather, yet something in the very bones of the village
shifted. The spire groaned. The false spirals pulsed once—then dimmed, like candles blown out bydivine breath.
His eyes were open.
But he did not look around.
He simply stood—silent, centered, changed.
His spiral burned visibly across his chest and arms, not as ink or scar, but as light. Not gold. Not
orange. But a pure white-fire hue that seemed to pulse in rhythm with the planet's own breath.
Skarn was the first to move.
He didn't roar. He didn't leap. He stepped forward slowly, reverently, as if approaching something
more than a friend—something more than even a god.
Torian turned then.
Their eyes met.
And Torian smiled.
It was small. Tired. But real.
"Skarn."
The beast rushed him, and Torian dropped to his knees as Skarn pressed his massive body against
him. The two held there—man and beast, flame and flesh—until even the wind dared not move
between them.
Karnis approached a moment later, his long feline frame shimmering under the spiral light.
"You came back," he said.
"I never left," Torian replied.
Karnis blinked, stepping closer."You're different."
"I am," Torian admitted. "But I remember."
He turned slowly, eyes sweeping over the twisted remnants of the village—the false flame altars, the
enslaved villagers, the towering spire.
"This is what I came back for."
⸻
They spent the next hour walking the perimeter of the village. People came out of hiding. Slowly.
Children clutched their mothers. Elders wept without knowing why. No one spoke Torian's name.
But all of them recognized him.
He walked past them with Skarn at his side and Karnis watching every rooftop, every alley, as if
expecting resistance.
But none came.
The chains binding the villagers had already fallen. The sigils on the towers had cracked and faded.
The fire atop the spire had withered into smoke.
Without a single word spoken, the flame had chosen.
⸻
Karnis found him alone at the ruins of what had once been Torian's home. A fireless hearth. A
broken roof. A single charred wall still standing, with a crude drawing etched into it—likely done by
Torian as a child.
He stood in front of it, one hand lightly touching the stone.
"I used to believe I had to destroy Malvorn to fix this," Torian said quietly.
Karnis stood behind him, arms crossed, tail flicking in the ash."And now?"
"Now I understand. I don't have to destroy him."
He turned, and his spiral pulsed softly.
"I have to end him."
⸻
They rebuilt a fire in the village center that night. Not a pyre. Not a signal. Just a flame. Clean.
Warm.
Villagers sat quietly in circles. Children played without understanding the weight of what had
passed. Skarn kept watch, silent and unmoving. Karnis leaned on a stone pillar, watching Torian
across the fire.
"You've ascended," he said.
"I'm not finished," Torian replied.
Karnis studied him. "You walk like a god. But you speak like a man."
"That's because I'm still both."
Karnis's violet aura flickered briefly, wrapping a loose stone near his foot and lifting it
absentmindedly.
"Do you fear what's next?"
"No," Torian said. "But I respect it."
He looked up at the stars.
"They're waiting for me."
Karnis followed his gaze."So is Malvorn."
⸻
In the morning, the villagers awoke to a strange sight: Torian, already standing at the head of the old
road, his blade strapped to his back, Skarn on his left, Karnis on his right.
He didn't give a speech.
Didn't make a proclamation.
He simply raised one hand toward the rising sun, and the spiral burned across the hills like a
beacon.
Then he spoke three words:
"It's time now."
They left at dawn.
No trumpets. No banners. Just footsteps in frost and firelight.
Torian walked with steady breath, each stride quiet but sure. His spiral no longer flickered—it
pulsed. A constant, low burn that never dimmed. His presence bent the air around him; not from
heat, but from gravity—as if the world had recognized something ancient and vital in him, and now
moved just slightly out of his way.
Skarn walked close, his wings occasionally unfurling with a twitch. The beast did not speak, but his
expression was one of resolve. He didn't glance behind.
Karnis followed on Torian's opposite side. The feline warrior's violet aura curled occasionally from
his fingertips, like a reflex he could no longer contain. He kept his eyes forward, shoulders squared.
But now and again, he'd glance toward Torian—measuring, weighing.
Torian never looked back.
⸻Behind them, the villagers stood at the edge of the ruined square, watching their saviors disappear
into the morning mist. Some held hands. Some clutched old relics. A few whispered prayers.
And then, slowly, as if guided by a rhythm they could not hear, they began to clean.
Not because they were told to.
But because they could.
The false spiral had fallen. The silence had broken.
Hope had returned.
⸻
On the ridge beyond the village, Karnis finally spoke.
"You've passed me," he said.
Torian didn't reply at first.
Karnis stopped walking. "I used to think I was the last defense this world had. That I was the only
one strong enough to face what's coming."
Torian turned slightly, eyes glowing faintly in the gray.
"You were."
Karnis's jaw clenched. "But not anymore."
"No."
There was no cruelty in his voice. No pride. Just truth.
And Karnis bowed his head.
"I'll still fight beside you," he said."I know."
They walked again.
⸻
As the horizon stretched forward, the first outline of a distant city came into view—its towers high
and jagged, its air thick with the weight of twisted fire.
Malvorn's capital.
A place no one had dared enter since the fall.
Torian didn't flinch.
"This is where it ends," he said.
Karnis nodded.
Skarn growled in agreement.
And the three of them continued forward, into the storm.
Not to survive.
But to finish what the world had begun.