The Veil trembled.
Far beyond the Stormbreaker Gorge, past the razed cities and cursed valleys, stood a fortress not built but grown—a spiraling cathedral of black stone and screaming bone. Its towers clawed the sky like fingers reaching for something long dead.
And at its heart, beneath a ceiling of flickering void-light, stood Malrik.
The Veilbound War Prince.
He stood still on the threshold of a great rift—a gash in the land that wept black wind and swallowed starlight. Around him, the silence was complete, save for the rhythmic pulsing of the shard floating before him.
It hovered like a heart ripped from reality. A jagged crystal of red-glass and obsidian, veined with lightning and decay. It was one of seven. The oldest.
And it now pulsed in time with Kael Rivenhart's heartbeat.
Behind Malrik, twelve kneeling Veil-commanders remained motionless. They did not dare to speak, not after the last one had been unraveled by a glance.
But Veskar, the three-eyed seer, could not remain silent.
"Stormbreaker… has failed. The Black Host's vanguard is broken. And the beacon—awakened. The Crimson One lives."
Malrik did not look at him.
His right gauntlet flexed, crackling with pale black arcs.
"He touched the relic."
It was not a question.
Veskar hesitated. "Yes, my prince."
"And it responded."
Malrik turned now. His eyes were unreadable — two pits of deep gold, haloed faintly by darkness. Not shadow. Something older.
"Then it is true."
He stepped forward, boot meeting rune-etched obsidian. Every step silenced the air further.
"The bloodline held."
Malrik entered the sanctum — a chamber without warmth, its ceiling lost to a mist of stars. Floating stones drifted like broken memories overhead, whispering names no longer spoken by any living tongue.
In the center hovered the Mirrorshard, a sliver of the Veil itself, cracked and caged in runes.
It pulsed once, then twice.
Kael's energy still lingered on it — wild, untamed, but growing.
"He awakens faster than I did," Malrik said aloud, though no one remained to listen. "The fire answers him without question."
A new voice slithered across the air.
"He remembers more than you did."
Malrik did not flinch. The voice had no mouth. No source. It came from the Veil, the living hunger behind all the world's grief.
"He was supposed to burn early," Malrik growled. "Be broken before the Beacon. Who interfered?"
"Perhaps no one. Perhaps fate still dances.
But even flame must kneel before the wind."
Malrik turned sharply to the Mirrorshard and placed his palm upon it. His mark — a mirror to Kael's, pulsing black — glowed beneath his armor.
And the shard reacted.
Not with resistance, but with cold, clear clarity.
He saw an image.
Kael. Bloodied. Standing on a mountain of corpses.
Blade raised high.
Lightning howling behind him.
But his face… changed.
Older.
Eyes darkened.
Smiling.
Malrik ripped his hand back.
Deep within the fortress, in vaults lit by memory-fire, the Mirrorbound began to wake.
Six armored wraiths, bodies made of shifting reflection. Their faces showed only what their enemies feared most. Their movements were not fluid, but fractured — like time skipping a breath.
One tilted its head at nothing.
Then another hissed:
"Crimson… Sovereign…"
Veskar stood at the threshold, aghast. "They've been still since the Wailing Era. Are they even loyal to us?"
Malrik passed him without looking.
"They are loyal to purpose. That is enough."
He raised his hand, and the vault responded. Glyphs flared. Symbols older than written speech branded the air, glowing briefly before fading back into the dark.
"Let them watch him."
"And if he comes too close to the truth?" Veskar asked.
Malrik's voice was quiet.
"Then they kill him."
In the great mosaic chamber, where the walls bore faded paintings of ancient kings and burning skies, Malrik stood before a glowing mural.
It had once told the tale of two warriors:
One cloaked in crimson fire, face hidden by light.
The other in shadowed flame, crowned by silence.
Between them, a shattered blade. Above them, a throne no longer filled.
And rising from the earth — the Veil.
A byproduct of their war.
Malrik stared at the mural as if it were a mirror.
"We were born of the same spark," he murmured. "But he forgot. He ran. I embraced it."
"Let him play hero. Let him gather allies and speak of hope."
"When he stands at the gates of the final city… he will see what we buried beneath it."
In the war chamber, Malrik moved his hand across the floating map. The Stormbreaker Gorge faded. Kael's current path shimmered — marked now in burning crimson.
Malrik pressed his palm to the center.
The map bled outward.
The second phase had begun.
He looked to the commanders, voice sharp, final, and cold:
"Unleash the next trials. Open the path to the Hollow Star."
"Let him believe he is winning."
"And when his flame reaches the peak…"
He turned. Behind his eyes, the void blinked.
"We show him the cost of fire."