The gates of the village didn't creak when they stepped through.
They simply gave way—quiet, splintered, weathered by flame and time. Torian crossed beneath the arch with Skarn to his left and Karnis trailing behind, his lean, feline form casting a stretched shadow across the ash-blown stone.
There was no celebration. No welcome. Only silence and the whisper of wind curling through the broken buildings like a ghost still looking for a reason to leave.
This was where it all began. Where everything burned.
And now, it was where everything had to begin again.
Skarn sniffed the air, his chest rising with a deep, slow breath. Even now, the beast's thick muscles tensed beneath his fur—half-waiting for battle. Karnis stopped beside what used to be the forge, his sharp eyes scanning the wreckage, tail flicking once in thought.
Torian said nothing. His eyes wandered across the shattered village square, the skeletal remains of homes, the half-buried stone well. Grass had begun to push through cracks in the stone. Tiny signs of stubborn life.
His boots crunched over soot and gravel.
He knelt beside the well. He remembered it—his sister used to race him to it in the mornings, fighting to be the one to draw the first bucket of water.
He touched the rim. It was cool. Real.
Alive.
I'm back, he thought. But I'm not the same.
Not even close.
⸻
They worked in silence that first day. There were no speeches, no plans drawn in chalk. Just motion. Skarn began clearing the eastern fields of rubble, dragging beams and stone with ease. Karnis restored the roof of a nearby shelter using only his mind, floating debris into place with his glowing purple aura. Torian set to work repairing the irrigation line, blasting shallow trenches with quick bursts of precision flame.
Villagers trickled in—survivors, wanderers, people who had heard that peace had come at last. They didn't ask questions. They simply joined in.
Within a week, they had six functioning homes.
Within two, they had running water.
Children laughed again.
But Torian didn't.
⸻
Each night, he sat by the fire with Skarn and Karnis, but rarely spoke. He'd nod. He'd smile. He'd offer ideas on rebuilding the watchtower or reinforcing the southern wall. But when the fire died down and the village quieted, he always stood, walked alone into the trees, and stared at the stars.
He could feel it.
The power.
The ember inside him had changed. Grown. Not in size—but in pressure.
It didn't surge. It didn't whisper. It simply waited—coiled, patient, as if it knew something he didn't.
He clenched his fists in the dark, his spiral glowing dimly through the fabric of his shirt.
He thought about the gods he'd slain. The titans he'd faced. The world he'd reshaped.
But the only thing he felt was the memory of his mother's scream, the ash on his fingers, and the coldness of running through the forest barefoot.
The boy is still inside me, he realized. But now he's surrounded by fire.
And that terrified him.
⸻
By the tenth day, he made his decision.
He stood at the edge of the village, staring south toward the horizon, where the air shimmered with heat even from miles away. Karnis approached behind him, silent.
"You're not just scouting ore, are you?" Karnis asked.
Torian didn't turn. "What makes you say that?"
"You're lying."
"Not to hurt you," Torian said. "Just to protect you."
Karnis sighed. "From what?"
"From me."
Karnis was quiet for a long moment. Then he stepped forward, placing a hand on Torian's shoulder. "You're not him anymore. The boy. The weapon. You're something else now."
Torian turned his head, eyes burning faintly gold. "And what if that something else is worse?"
Karnis didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
⸻
Skarn met him by the edge of the forest. The beast growled low in his throat when he saw the pack on Torian's back.
"I'll be gone two, maybe three days," Torian said. "White Ridge. Iridan mineral deposits under the southern cliffs."
Skarn huffed, pacing in a slow circle around him, muscles tight.
Torian knelt beside him. "I'll be fine."
Skarn bumped his forehead into Torian's chest. Not hard—but enough to say I know you're lying.
Torian pressed his hand to Skarn's head and whispered, "Please trust me."
Skarn didn't move. Didn't growl. Just sat.
Silent.
Still.
Watching him leave.
⸻
He didn't fly at first.
He walked.
Past the tree line, past the jagged hills that marked the southern edge of the known world. Past rivers that had run dry since the fall of Malvorn's reign. Past skeletons of old cities swallowed by sand.
He needed time.
Time to think.
Time to try and understand why he couldn't sleep without seeing fire behind his eyelids. Why his hands trembled at night even though the war was over.
I killed monsters. I saved the world. So why does it still feel like I'm falling apart?
He didn't know.
But he knew where he had to go.
⸻
The Ul'Ratha Desert greeted him like a silent god.
Endless white sand. No wind. No life. Just heat—pure, unrelenting, impossible heat.
He stepped forward.
And the ember stirred.
The first dune swallowed his shadow.
Torian stood at the rim of the Ul'Ratha Desert, its pale sands burning white under a punishing sun. No birds circled overhead. No wind blew. Even the air seemed hesitant, unwilling to move in a place that had forgotten mercy.
He stepped forward, barefoot.
The sand hissed underfoot but didn't harm him. The heat around him thickened, warping the horizon in slow, nauseating waves. Every footfall sizzled, but the spiral beneath his skin burned hotter still.
He welcomed it.
No cloak. No armor. No sword.
He didn't need them.
⸻
By the third hour, his body began to glow faintly—not from light, but pressure. His spiral had never been silent, but now it screamed inward. Like a sun with its own heartbeat, pulsing through every bone and thought.
His breath shortened. Not from fatigue. From the storm inside him pressing outward, demanding release.
He passed a shattered spire, half-buried in sand. Some ancient ruin. Maybe once a tower, now nothing but melted stone and bones ground into dust. The desert had erased entire cities.
Now, it would erase part of him.
⸻
He walked until the ground stopped shifting beneath his steps.
Flat. White. Still.
The center.
Here, the heat didn't rise. It pressed down. A crushing weight. The spiral inside him responded immediately—lines of flame flickering along his arms, chest, back.
He dropped to one knee.
Pressed both palms into the sand.
It didn't burn him. It accepted him.
His spiral flared bright gold.
And then he screamed.
⸻
The scream wasn't human.
It didn't carry rage.
It carried everything.
Every nightmare.
Every cry in the forest that no one heard.
Every death he failed to stop.
Every broken moment he never showed the world.
It poured out of him in a blinding eruption of fire—spiraling upward, outward, into the sky and across the desert like a living sun.
The sand didn't melt.
It vanished.
Miles of desert evaporated in an instant.
Mountains cracked.
The clouds were blown apart.
Animals hundreds of miles away scattered. Oceans rippled. Trees in faraway forests bent from a wind that hadn't touched them in centuries.
A supernova had bloomed on the face of the world.
⸻
Torian rose into the air—no wings, no magic. Only force. Flame spiraled around his legs and spine, lifting him as if the world itself was pushing him away.
The spiral across his chest burned white-hot.
His eyes glowed brighter than suns.
His scream became a roar—wordless, holy, wild.
And then…
It stopped.
⸻
Silence.
He hovered above the crater—miles wide now. Its center glowed. The air rippled like it was still deciding what laws to obey.
He floated down, slowly, gently.
His feet touched the smooth, glassy basin.
All around him, the sand began to fall inward, rushing into the pit in long golden waves, trying to cover the wound.
But it couldn't.
Not yet.
Torian stood alone at the center.
Steam rolled off his shoulders.
His spiral dimmed.
His breath slowed.
The power was gone—not lost, but spent. Emptied.
He felt hollow.
But he also felt something he hadn't in years.
Stillness.
⸻
Far to the north, in the rebuilt village, Skarn stood upright—ears twitching, eyes fixed on the southern sky. Karnis stepped out from the workshop and followed his gaze.
The horizon boiled with gold light.
Then it vanished.
Replaced by a thin column of smoke.
Something had been burned away.
⸻
Torian looked to the sky, took one breath, and launched.
The crater exploded behind him in a burst of red-gold light as he spiraled upward, shooting through the clouds like a comet.
Wind caught fire in his wake.
He angled north.
⸻
He fell from the sky like a star.
The village gates—repaired in the weeks since his departure—rattled under the pressure of his approach.
A single thunderous impact cracked the ground as Torian landed in the center of the square, dust exploding outward, villagers stumbling back in shock.
He stood straight.
Calm.
Steam rolled off his skin.
His eyes were dim now—normal.
Karnis and Skarn rushed toward him.
Skarn barked a deep sound between relief and reprimand, circling him, sniffing furiously.
"I'm alright," Torian said.
He looked… lighter.
His shoulders not sagging, but looser. His expression not grim, but tired in a way that suggested healing.
"I let it go," he said softly.
Karnis stepped forward, eyes wide.
"You let what go?"
Torian looked past him. At the mountains. The sky. The world.
"My ghosts."
⸻
That night, the fire was quiet.
Children didn't laugh. They stared in awe at the man who had fallen from the sky like a god, returned like a ghost, and now sat like any other man by the embers.
Skarn curled beside him, head resting against his knee.
Karnis sat nearby, sharpening a blade, but watching.
Torian didn't speak.
He just stared into the fire.
⸻
Far beneath the earth, in a vault long sealed and forgotten, a single ember flickered.
Not from heat.
From memory.
A power had been unleashed.
And the old things…
Were beginning to wake.