The red eye burned like a small sun. Ash climbed in cords. The shadow blade rose for the cut that would end the aisle.
Elira drew breath and chose.
"Light, pierce the dark; Darkness, cloak the blade—Lumeveil, awaken!"
The air ripped. Her sword split and re-formed in her hands, longer, heavier, alive. Light ran the fuller like liquid gold; a deep violet shadow braided the spine. Day and night shared one edge.
"Light Form!" she called. The gold flared; heat lifted the ash around her boots.
Mira's teeth flashed in a quick, fierce smile. She tipped her chin to the spinning rings and let her voice rise.
"Burn, flood, and freeze—the trinity of ruin! Aurefrost, awaken!"
The twin arcs fused into a bright halo, then split into three: fire, water, ice—circling her wrists like three moons, each singing a different note.
Kael set his stance and opened his hands as if taking an oath.
"Stone unyielding, thunder unchained—Thundraga, awaken!"
Draga's plates cracked and flowed, reforging into a taller frame that fit him like a second body. Faint horns of metal curved back over his shoulders; pale arcs crawled his gauntlets like tame lightning.
The Ashen Warden moved first. Its sword fell like a tower. Elira stepped in and lifted the greatsword with both hands. Light met shadow. The blow split on her edge and slid away in two sheaves of gray, carving shallow trenches in the flagstones to either side.
"Sanctaria Light!" she cried, and a bright ring opened from her crossguard, catching the next sweep and breaking its weight.
"Window!" Mira shouted.
Elira dropped the ring. "Night Form!" The violet along the blade swelled; the edge went cold and thin. She slipped under the Warden's arm and cut low. The shadow metal there thinned with a hiss, as if light and dark both had found a seam to pry.
Mira drove into the gap. "Crimson Deluge!" Fire and water braided into a red river that struck the soft point and blew outward as steam. She snapped her right hand. "Glacier Break!" Ice spears burst up, pinning the torn cinder at the hip.
"Set!" Kael barked. He palmed two dull rings of soil and spark and slid them under the Warden's lead foot. "Pulse Vault—set!" The sigils sank. He backed three steps, braced. "Ring detonate!"
The floor erupted in a tight cone. The Warden's heel lurched; the huge frame listed. Kael surged in and hammered the open side with a bare, heavy blow.
"Stone Breaker!" Metal boomed; ash poured.
The red eye blazed and the hall turned furnace-hot. Ash boiled off the floor and spun into thick cords that wrapped Elira's wrists and blade, Mira's rings, Kael's ankles. Heat stole breath.
"Hydro Mirror!" Mira snapped, and a thin curve of water flashed up over the cords at her arms. Ash hit the mirror and skated, blowing past her shoulder instead of locking tight. She cut fire across the mirror's edge. "Vapor Edge!" Steam popped the cord loose.
"High line!" Kael called, kicking sparks into a fresh ring. "Pulse Vault—set! Arm!"
The Warden drew breath—if a thing of ash could breathe—and the cords on Elira's wrists tightened. Lumeveil's voice slid along her bones, cool and near.
Shift. Do not saw. Write.
Elira rolled her wrists against the bind and cut a single, exact stroke. "Lantern Needle!" The cord split on a hairline of gold and fell away smoking.
The shadow sword rose again. Elira didn't wait for it. "Light Form!" She met the angle early and shoved up and out, turning the mass away from Mira's throat. Violet slid under gold on her edge; the cut broke and went long.
"Chain!" Mira pointed—the thin crack Elira had made at the hip widened as cooked ash fell. "Open!"
"Frostvine Cataclysm!" She threw six glyph-seeds that sank and burst. Ice vines laced the rent and dragged it wider, then froze hard. "Hold!"
Kael's eyes lit with storm. "Holding." He stepped under the Warden's center of mass and slammed both palms down. "Quake Step!" The stones heaved; the ash hull above them wobbled.
Elira took the breath the Keeper had told her to take. No half-steps. She raised the greatsword over her shoulder.
"Light Form!" She started the swing bright—
"Night Form!" —and finished it dark.
The edge chewed clean through the braced vines and the soft ash beneath, cutting the Warden's flank open from hip to waist. Gray poured like sand from a broken hourglass.
The red eye stuttered. Ash rushed to mend. It almost found purchase—until Kael's low voice entered the seam like a nail.
"Pulse Vault—ring detonate."
The second buried mine punched inside the wound. The ash mending broke and flew. The Warden went to one knee with a sound like a kiln cracking.
"Press!" Mira shouted, skin flushed from heat. Her halo spun into a blur. "Tri-Arc Surge!" Fire, water, and ice braided in a tight helix and drove point-blank into the red eye. Steam roared. The eye flickered, went dim, flared again out of stubborn hate.
The Warden's sword swept blind, wild. Elira ducked; the flat of the blade skimmed her shoulder and rang her teeth. She tasted iron. Her boots slid in cinder. The heat wanted to choke her.
Focus, Lumeveil said, and the word found her center like a hand.
"Sanctaria Light!" She threw a short dome over Mira to block a blind backhand, then let it drop the instant it saved the head. "Night Form!" She ghosted around the falling edge and carved two fast lines across the back of the Warden's knee, cutting hinge to powder.
It crashed forward. Kael was already moving.
"Lock the steps—Iron Lockstep!" The floor seized the Warden's shins in a sudden collar of stone. The giant jerked but could not rise. Kael lifted both fists, elbows close, and drove straight down. "Stone Breaker!" Shadow plate dented in a wide dish.
Mira drew a long, thin breath. Her voice came steady now, joy and pain tight together. "Glacier Break!" Pillars shot up from either side and clamped the Warden's sword arm. She twisted her wrist. "Crimson Deluge!" Steam poured into the red eye, burning what little light it had mustered back to life.
"Now, Elira!" she cried.
Elira raised the greatsword. Light and shadow pulsed together under her hands, no longer fighting, only moving the way a tide moves when the moon says go.
"Lumeveil!" Her call filled the hall. She cut across the eye in a single, clean arc.
The red point went out like a candle pinched between fingers.
For a breath, the Warden held its shape out of habit. Then the ash learned that nothing was telling it to be anything anymore. The huge frame slumped, folded, and poured away. Cinders spiraled up toward the rafters and lost themselves in the wide dark there.
Silence landed. It stayed.
Elira set the greatsword point to the floor and leaned until her arms stopped shaking. Then she let the release go. The blade eased back into its slimmer form with a last, soft pulse.
Mira dropped to a knee, laughing once in a raw voice, steam halo shrinking to two small rings that hung obediently at her wrists.
Kael stood with his hands on his thighs, chest rising hard. Thundraga's taller shell settled and closed until it was once more the armor that fit like skin.
Across the hall, the Keeper moved for the first time since the Warden had risen. Each step brushed ash into small lines behind her, as neat as the hems of her robe.
"You have passed," she said, not loud, but the room made space for the words.
Elira looked up. "Is it… over?"
"For now," the Keeper said. Her eyes touched each of them in turn. "You called them as they were meant to be called. You did not shatter the hall. You did not burn your own hands to cook your meal. This place knows the weight of restraint. It will allow you to go on."
Mira blew a damp curl from her forehead. "Permission to hate tests that talk."
A faint smile moved the Keeper's mouth. "Granted."
Kael rolled his shoulder; a plate clicked back into a true line. "What does it guard?"
"Memory," the Keeper said. "And the names that memory takes when men try to own it."