Duncan emerged from the spiral staircase with the First Beast at his side.
The Sea of Glass had changed.
Where once there had been stillness—an eerie calm broken only by the whisper of memories—now chaos reigned. Crystal spires cracked and toppled, sending glittering shards into the air like jagged snow. The sky above churned violently. The Breach, once a narrow tear of golden light, had widened into a rift that pulsed like a wounded heart.
From it fell strands of searing fire and writhing shadow—both unnatural and alive.
Duncan stood at the edge of the monolith's rise, his chest heaving. The Emberblade, now dissolved into glowing runes that shimmered on his skin, pulsed in rhythm with the beast beside him.
"What are we looking at?" he asked.
The First Beast raised its horned head to the sky.
"Not flame. Not void. This… is Dominion."
The Legacy Unravels
As the storm thickened, shapes began to descend from the Breach.
Not beasts.
Not soldiers.
Something in between.
They moved like smoke, but bore armor etched with Dominion script. Their forms were tall, narrow, angular—wrong. Duncan had never seen them before, but deep in his bones, something recoiled.
"The Forgotten Architects," the First Beast growled. "They built your kingdom from our bones and fire. Then fled the world they broke."
Now they returned—drawn by the opening of the final gate.
Drawn by him.
Duncan watched one of the beings drift lower, its featureless face glowing with an inner fire, arms outstretched like a priest descending to his altar.
It didn't speak.
It only stared.
But Duncan could feel it peering inside him. Through memory. Through blood. Through fire.
And then the whispers began.
"You bear the flame."
"But you were not meant to remember."
"Come to the Breach. Come to the root."
The Voice in the Breach
Duncan staggered as visions slammed into him—images not from the past, but from before history.
Before gates.
Before beasts.
Before man.
A world wrapped in primal flame, ruled not by kings or beasts, but by keepers—figures of thought and energy, bound to no form but hungry for form.
The Architects.
They had seeded flame into the world to shape it—crafting beasts of memory and men of purpose.
But men chose freedom.
And flame, once shared, became wild.
It burned its makers.
The Architects fled—shattering the flame into fragments, sealing parts of it beneath the world in the form of the gates. Every beast, every fire-touched weapon, every legacy—it had all been a containment effort.
And Duncan…
He was a breach.
Born of sealed flame and broken purpose.
The Choice
The First Beast watched him quietly as the visions faded.
"You see it now," the beast said.
Duncan nodded.
"Yes. I was never supposed to exist."
"No one is," the beast replied. "But you do. And you remember. That makes you dangerous."
Above, the Architects circled.
Waiting.
Watching.
Inviting.
The flame on Duncan's body pulsed with impossible pressure. He could feel it trying to shape him—reshape him—into something that fit their design.
But he didn't move.
He turned to the First Beast.
"They expect me to go up. Through the Breach. Return the flame."
"And will you?"
Duncan looked at the Emberrunes on his arm, the pulse of memory in his chest, the storm above.
And he made his choice.
"No," he said.
"I won't return their fire."
Ash and Ascension
He turned his blade-scribed palm to the crystal beneath his feet.
Then, for the first time, Duncan gave fire instead of using it.
The memory of his father's voice.
The sound of his mother's laugh.
The final breath of his first squadmate.
He poured it into the Sea of Glass.
And it burned gold.
The flame did not destroy—it awakened. The cracked sea lit with spiraling light, as if remembering what it once was: not a battlefield, not a prison—but a promise.
Memory that belonged to all.
From across the horizon, beasts began to howl.
Not in fear.
In recognition.
The old fire had returned.
Not chained. Not forgotten.
Shared.
The Architects Break
The beings above reeled back as the light spread.
Their forms frayed at the edges, peeling like paper. They had built their rule on forgetfulness, on fractured truth and severed memory.
Now Duncan stood at the center of a rekindled world.
"I don't need to ascend," he shouted to the sky. "I don't need your order. Your flame. Your designs."
"I'll burn my own path."
The Breach screamed, shedding light and shadow in equal measure.
Then, with a thunderous pulse—
It closed.
And the world exhaled.