Let the frost settle before the flame ignites.
The wind knifed through the pines, sharp with scentless breath.Not a breeze — a warning. A blade drawn somewhere far, far above.
They had crossed into the southern reach of Druvadir, past the groves and ancestral stones, now walking where few dared, where even echoes walked carefully. The land was changing again — less forest now, more stone beneath the snow, the bones of mountain ridges curling like ancient beasts sleeping beneath the frost.
Kaia crouched low at the ridge's edge, golden eyes fixed on the shape that stood in the ruins below.
A watchtower, long dead. A fragment of a time when the Wild Wars scarred the land with skirmishes no scroll remembered. Now it leaned sideways, ribs of stone jutting from the white like a corpse trying to rise. Its crown had collapsed inward, and vines had crept into its wounds like silent healers.
And in its center stood a man.
He wore white — a cloak of almost ceremonial stillness. Gold thread traced quiet runes across its hem. A half-torn mask, mirrored and plain, covered his face. He did not move.
But he was not waiting.
He was measuring.
Rei stood at Kaia's side, the cold tugging at the torn edges of his coat, the mark on his chest pulsing softly beneath linen and leather. The Void wasn't screaming now — it was watching.
Kaia whispered, "That scent. I know it."
Rei tilted his head. "Order?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Not anymore. But once. It's been... rewritten."
As if hearing her, the figure below raised his head.
"I thought it would take longer to find you," he said.
His voice echoed faintly in the frost — calm, clean, like a blade sharpened too often.
Kaia stepped forward, boots crunching lightly into the drift.
"You're Sareth Valek, one of the Sanctums Shade"
The man nodded once. "And you are with the Riftborn."
Kaia drew no weapon. Not yet.
"I've heard your name."
"And I've seen his face," Valek replied. "In dreams, in fractures, in the blood-winds beneath the Sanctum. The mark is no longer dormant. The Void breathes."
Kaia moved beside Rei, slow and tense, like a huntress circling something sacred and lethal.
"You're from The Order," she said. "Or you were."
"I was," Valek answered. "I left, or I shifted, Not in defiance. In clarity."
"Why?" Rei asked.
Valek was silent for a breath. Then he stepped forward — not aggressive, not hesitant.
"I followed the previous Riftborn," he said. "Across millenia and ten nations. I saw him tear a canyon through the Spirit Veil of Koshirō. I saw him kneel in Solheim and beg the Flame not to take him."
"And you killed him?" Rei asked.
"No," Valek said, quietly. "I couldn't. He vanished into the Rift between Seals. Some say the Void reclaimed him. Others… say he chose to return."
Rei felt the mark in his chest stir. Not in recognition. In unease.
Kaia's hand drifted toward her bone-knives.
"You're not here for talk," she said.
Valek didn't disagree.
"I came to see," he said. "To measure the thread the Rift has spun this time. You, boy — are unfinished."
Rei's brow furrowed. "Unfinished?"
"You carry the mark, but you do not know its name. You walk the path, but you don't know which wound you are meant to reopen."Valek's head tilted, just slightly. "You were chosen. Not by fate. By failure."
Rei stepped forward now, closer, until only a few paces of snow stood between them.
"I never asked for this," he said.
Valek's reply came cold and sharp: "Neither did the world."
The wind surged between them, tearing snow from the tower's fallen stones.
Kaia's ears flattened. The shadows around the ruin deepened.
Valek's hand moved slightly — not to draw, but to touch the handle of the blade at his side. Its hilt was pale — bone or ivory — wrapped in dark cloth. No glow. No hum. But Rei could feel it breathe.
"Your Void is young," Valek murmured. "Your fear still human. But it's there, behind your eyes. I saw it when you touched the Fangstone. I saw it in the trail of ashes Blackstone left behind."
"And what," Rei said softly, "do you want from me?"
Valek's answer came like truth cleaving silence.
"To see if you are worth killing."
Kaia moved.
But Valek raised one gloved hand, not in defense — in pause.
"Not yet," he said. "I have one question."
Rei held still.
Valek's mirrored mask reflected Rei's eyes — violet, burning faintly even now.
"When the darkness calls your name," Valek said, "what do you feel? Power? Hunger? Or fear?"
Rei didn't speak immediately.
He looked at Kaia. At the blade at his hip. At the mark beneath his chest — pulsing faintly like a heartbeat sealed in iron.
"…None of those," he said. "I feel… pulled. Like something is trying to make me remember who I was, but not as me."
Valek stood still for a long time.
Then, slowly, he drew his sword.
Not fast. Not dramatic.
A clean motion, born from practice and ritual.
The blade shimmered faintly — not with magic, but memory. It was dull silver, inscribed with runes that no longer glowed. It did not want to kill.
It needed to.
Kaia stepped between them, blades half-drawn.
"Enough," she said. "Say what you came to say."
Valek did not raise the sword.
"I have said it," he said. "And now…"
He turned the blade sideways.
"…I measure the Rift's new edge."
A long silence fell between the three of them.
Snow drifted lazily between them, like ashes.
Rei's hand moved to his hilt.
He didn't draw.
But he no longer hesitated.
"I'm not the first," he said.
"No," Valek answered. "But you might be the last."
Then — a single step forward.
And the Void flared inside Rei like a low horn beneath the sea.
Kaia exhaled sharply. Her body coiled like a spring.
The blades hadn't clashed yet.
But the war had already begun.