The skies of Elaris did not rise gently.
They burned.
Not with fire — but with the weight of something coming. Clouds like scorched silk drifted overhead, casting shifting shadows across the dying earth. Wind bit through the treeline as if warning the world to hold its breath.
And beneath that bleeding horizon, two figures pressed forward.
Rei walked like a man still shaking the memory of chains. His posture was upright, but each step carried the weight of confinement. The tunic he wore hung loose on his frame — salvaged from the ruins of the Frostfang village, its fabric still marked by the faint scent of ashroot and thawflower. A borrowed blade hung at his side, unfamiliar. Still foreign in his hand.
Beside him, Kaia moved with the grace of a predator born into motion. Her steps barely touched the earth. Wind played with the ends of her braid, and though her knives were hidden beneath her sash, their presence seemed to glint in her golden eyes.
They hadn't spoken since dawn.
Not out of discomfort — but because the silence said enough.
Rei was still trying to understand the world.
Kaia was still deciding if he deserved to be part of it.
It was she who broke the silence first.
"Your stance is too loud."
Rei blinked. "Loud?"
"Your heels strike before your toes. That's not walking. That's announcing."
He tried again. Adjusted.
Still clumsy.
Kaia shook her head and muttered, "Stars help us if you try to sneak into a beastkin camp like that."
He didn't answer. He only nodded and followed.
They came upon a cliff ridge by midmorning.
Beyond it, the world dropped into a frostbitten valley — a chasm of mist and ancient trees coiled beneath mountains like sleeping serpents. Far in the distance, the glimmer of ice-covered ridges marked the path toward the Wyrmspine.
Kaia's ears twitched.
She froze.
"We're being followed."
Rei tensed beside her. "You're sure?"
"Breath too shallow. Steps too measured. They've been trailing us since we left the grove."
"Bandits?"
Kaia's expression darkened.
"No. Not bandits."
She unsheathed one of her knives with a flick, letting the sunlight catch its curved fang-blade.
"Order."
The word dropped like lead.
Rei's breath hitched. The brand beneath his ribs pulsed, reacting as if it recognized the name — or what it meant.
"Can we outrun them?"
Kaia looked at him sideways.
"Not unless you've been hiding wings under that tunic."
She pulled her other blade free and backed into the brush.
"Stay behind me. And if you feel the Void stir…"
Rei swallowed.
"I'll hold it back."
"No. You won't," she said. "You'll use it. If it means we live."
The attack came like smoke: fast, silent, unnatural.
Figures emerged from the fog — cloaked in white, masked in bone-white porcelain, their steps ghostlike across the brittle underbrush. There was no battle cry. No war horn. Their weapons didn't gleam. They were made for killing, not intimidation.
"They wore the masks of the Hollow Flame — one of Sanctum's oldest and most zealous sub-orders."
Kaia moved first.
Her knives sang in the air, slicing through cloth and bone with surgical precision. She moved like frost across still water — untouched, deadly, beautiful.
Rei ducked low. His body remembered pain, but not combat. He deflected a strike with the flat of his blade, barely avoiding a follow-up kick that knocked the wind from his lungs.
He rolled to his feet.
The world blurred.
His chest pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
The shadows moved around him — too slow, too heavy — like they were falling through water.
He could feel it.
The mark was waking.
Not now. Not now.
A blade kissed his cheek.
Then—
"You are not meant to walk free, Riftborn."
The voice came from the mist — smooth, toneless, and cold.
A tall figure stepped forward. Horned mask. Smoke-colored robes. Staff in one hand, chain-blade in the other.
"You are the fracture. The failed vessel. A threat to the balance."
Kaia snarled. "You want balance?"
She threw a blade.
It shattered the mask.
The figure collapsed — not dead, but wounded — and the rest of the cloaked attackers hesitated.
That was enough.
Rei grabbed her wrist. "We run."
They ran until their lungs ached.
Until the sun dipped behind the ridge and the mist swallowed the trail. They found shelter beneath a stone overhang — barely a hollow, but dry and dark.
Kaia collapsed to her knees and hissed through her teeth.
Rei turned.
"You're hurt."
She looked up. Blood trickled from her arm.
"It's nothing."
He tore part of his sleeve and pressed it gently to the wound.
"Let me help."
She didn't stop him.
Not this time.
Minutes passed before either spoke again.
"You didn't use the Void," she said.
Rei didn't meet her gaze. "I was afraid."
"Of the Order?"
"Of myself."
Kaia leaned back, the firelight catching her golden eyes.
"Then learn control. Because next time, fear won't save you. I might not be there."
He nodded slowly.
But then her voice softened.
"...But for now, I am."
**
Far above them, on a ridge overlooking the valley, a masked figure watched through a spyglass — his porcelain visor cracked, his robes dusted with ash and ritual chalk. A broken Hollow Flame mask hung from his belt — a mark not of shame, but survival.
This was Sereth Valek, once a High Warden of the White Cloaks, now a Sanctum Shade — the eyes of the Order in places too wild for doctrine.
A whisper slipped from his lips, old and bitter.
"He awakens. The Riftborn has not unraveled. Not yet."
Another robed figure emerged behind him, kneeling low.
"Orders?"
Valek didn't look.
"Send word to the Sanctum. Tell the High Cantor… the star still burns."