The Black Spine Mountains were a world apart.
Gone were the warm fires of Embermane camps and the red skies of the southern plains. Here, the sky was a ceiling of stormclouds, pierced by jagged black peaks that seemed to bleed shadow. Snow fell in thin, ash-colored flurries, hissing as it touched Kael's skin.
Kael stood at the mountain's edge with his cloak whipping in the wind, eyes fixed on the narrow pass ahead.
"This is where the old gods whispered," Kaelen had once said. "And where their grave songs still echo."
Now, Kael could hear them. Quiet… but calling.
Behind him, the warband slowed. Even the Embermanes, fearless and fire-touched, grew uneasy.
They passed through an ancient gate—half-collapsed stone bearing forgotten runes that pulsed faintly as Kael approached. As Ashrend came close, the runes sparked to life, briefly glowing crimson.
Darric exhaled. "This place was sealed for a reason."
"Then we'll unseal it with purpose," Kael replied.
Lyra knelt by the runes. "Velaryn sigils. Not just a warning. A prison."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Or a trial."
They entered the pass. Darkness swallowed them.
As the path narrowed into a tunnel, the mountain screamed.
Stone cracked. Something massive moved in the black—a guardian left behind from an age before Velaryn.
It lunged.
A serpentine wyrm of obsidian and molten bone, its eyes molten like twin suns. Its body twisted unnaturally, claws scrabbling through stone as it roared in fury.
Kael was already moving.
"Ashrend—Rend the Coil!"
A crimson slash cut deep into the wyrm's neck, searing magma from the wound. But the creature didn't fall—it turned its fury on Kael.
Darric shield-charged it from behind, striking the creature's lower spine.
Korran hurled his hammer into the beast's mouth. "Chew on that, wyrmfreak!"
The monster spat it out with a scream—but then Lyra loosed three glowing arrows, each tipped with Sovereign glass. They pierced the wyrm's eye.
Kael surged forward, blade igniting with black-red lightning.
"Final judgment."
Ashrend sliced the beast in half with a cross-slash so intense the tunnel shook—its walls cracking, its ceiling trembling.
The wyrm collapsed with a gurgling hiss.
In its wake lay something deeper than stone.
A hidden passage, buried for centuries—behind the guardian's lair. A staircase spiraled down into frost-rimed obsidian.
Kael stood at the top, eyes alight. "This wasn't just a prison. It's a vault."
"What's inside?" Lyra asked.
Kael didn't turn.
"Power. Secrets. And maybe… a memory the world tried to bury."