By dawn, the road east shimmered with war.
Duncan rode at the front of the Bannerless, now joined by the Flameborn host. Their numbers had swelled—over three hundred strong. Flameblooded warriors bore heat-tempered spears, and archers strung obsidian-tipped arrows. Great beast-lizards with fire-hardened scales lumbered beside the war caravans, each carrying cauldrons of alchemical pitch or racks of ballista bolts laced with glowing rune-iron.
The air crackled with tension.
Emberdeep Forge lay less than a day's march ahead, nestled in the mouth of a valley once carved by lava, now cooled and fortified into a temple of firecraft. It was sacred ground—where molten ore from the heart of the land was coaxed into weapons that sang in battle.
It was also under siege.
Kaelen stood beside Duncan atop a ridge overlooking the trail. Smoke already rose on the horizon. He narrowed his eyes.
"They came faster than I feared."
Duncan lowered his spyglass.
Below, enemy forces spread in a crescent around the Forge. The Iron Quellers. They wore no sigils, but their armor was dark-mirrored, reflecting sunlight in eerie flashes. Some bore strange staves that hummed with unnatural energy. Others led beast-hounds bred with spikebone and twisted horns—monsters trained to hunt Flameborn blood.
Kaelen's voice was low. "Quellers don't fight with honor. They don't parley. They erase. That's what they were made for."
Duncan's jaw clenched. "Then we'll break their purpose."
Kael joined them, crouching beside a map scratched into soot-covered stone. "Their left flank is weakest. They don't expect resistance from the gorge—we can use the fire-lizards there to break the line."
Kaelen pointed to the ridge above the forge. "My archers will take the high ground. Burn their reserves before they reach the inner sanctum."
Duncan looked across his men. Each one battle-tested, hardened, and marked by what they'd survived. And now, they were more than just survivors.
They were kindling.
"Signal the charge," he said.
The Bannerless moved like a thunderstorm—silent at first, then impossible to ignore.
They struck just as the Quellers began their morning drills. Alarms rang too late. From the gorge came the roar of lizard-beasts charging, flinging molten tar from saddle-mounted cauldrons. The left flank buckled instantly—Quellers screamed as flame rolled over their mirrored plate.
Duncan led the vanguard.
He slammed into the enemy like a falling star, Ashborn already glowing white-hot. Each strike shattered shields. Each parry seared steel. The Crown at his side pulsed in rhythm with his fury.
Kaelen and the Flameborn surged from the high cliffs, raining fire-glass arrows down onto the Queller mages. Where their staves cracked the earth, Flameborn spears answered. The air turned to a battlefield of ash and lightning.
But the Quellers were not weak.
One of their commanders stepped forward, clad in full iron-black armor. He raised a staff crowned with a beast skull and spoke a word Duncan couldn't understand.
The fire died.
Flame arrows fizzled mid-air. Spears grew cold. Even Ashborn dimmed.
The temperature dropped like a corpse.
Kaelen cursed. "Null-fire. That's what they brought."
Duncan saw the Crown tremble at his side. Not in fear—but in resistance. It hated the Quellers. Hated this suppression. The Old Kings had once warred against such silence.
Duncan drew the crown from his side.
He didn't put it on.
He just held it.
Light burst across the battlefield—not like fire, but like memory. Red and gold and searing white flared outward in a pulse. The null-field cracked. Ashborn re-ignited, its edge keening.
Kaelen grinned fiercely. "Whatever you just did… do it again."
Duncan charged.
He reached the Null-fire commander in ten strides.
Their weapons met once.
Then the commander's staff shattered under the weight of Ashborn, its skull crown crumbling into ash. Duncan didn't stop—he drove forward, slammed his shoulder into the man's chest, and sent him sprawling into the black-glass sand.
The field broke.
The fire returned.
Flameborn warriors roared as they surged forward, pressing the now-faltering Quellers into retreat. Their beasts snarled and turned—but even they sensed the shift in the land's favor.
Kael met Duncan near the forge gates, covered in soot, grinning through cracked lips. "Victory?"
Duncan didn't smile.
He pointed toward the inner sanctum, where smoke still billowed unnaturally.
"Not yet."
Inside the Forge Temple, they found it.
A machine.
A Dominion-built crucible—set at the heart of the flame wells, siphoning power from the land's oldest heat and turning it cold. Runed chains wrapped around the lava veins, bleeding energy into a dark stone core held in suspension above a mechanical altar.
Duncan approached it cautiously.
The stone pulsed with a rhythm. Not heat. Not life.
Control.
Kaelen spat. "They were trying to tame the Emberheart."
Duncan looked to Alra, who had arrived with the rear guard. Her expression was unreadable.
"They're trying to bind everything wild," she said softly. "First the beasts. Then the flame. Next… the land itself."
Duncan drew Ashborn and slammed the sword into the machine.
The altar shattered. The chains snapped. The stone cracked in half.
And the flame returned.
Real flame—natural, primal, furious—exploded upward, licking the ceiling and searing away the Dominion corruption.
Outside, the sky cleared for the first time in days.
The Forge had been reclaimed.
That night, the Flameborn held a burning rite—celebration through trial. Fires were lit across the obsidian valleys, and each warrior, one by one, dipped their hands into sacred ash and swore loyalty not to a name, but to a path.
Kaelen stood beside Duncan as the flames flickered high.
"We are yours, Crown-Bearer," he said.
Duncan nodded, eyes fixed on the embers swirling skyward.
"We're not done," he said. "The Dominion will send more. Worse."
Alra stepped forward. "Then we move before they do."
Kael unrolled a rough map. "There's a Dominion fortress five days north—Hightower Reach. It controls three beast routes and most of the Eastern Wilds' trade lines. It's heavily fortified, but if we take it…"
Duncan grinned. "We break their spine."
Kaelen clapped him on the back. "Then we ride at first flame."
As the fires burned into the dark, Duncan stepped aside, pulling the Crown from its wrappings once again. He stared into its silent gleam.
Not yet, he thought.
Not until they all kneel.
But soon.