The Crossroads had become a tapestry of scars. Though the void's hunger was leashed, new rifts glimmered at the edges of the realm—gateways to untouched worlds, their skies unbroken, their histories unwritten. The raven guided Ethan to them, its gold-flecked eyes reflecting futures he could not yet grasp.
It led him to a desert where the sand sang.
The dunes shifted like living things, parting to reveal a city of obsidian spires. Figures cloaked in storm-gray robes emerged, their faces marked with tattoos of winged serpents. They called themselves the Ashirai—the First Keepers. And they knew his name.
"Duskheir," their elder hissed, her voice a chorus of whispers. "You wear the mantle but deny the blood. Heretic."
The Ashirai had served the original Duskheir, a wanderer who predated the Veyra line. Their legends spoke of a guardian unshackled by lineage, chosen not by birth but by "the whisper of the uncorrupted void." To them, the Veyras were usurpers—a bloodline that poisoned the title with ambition.
"You're wrong," Ethan said, standing in their council chamber. "I'm not here to claim anything. The void is evolving. I need to understand how."
The elder, Nari, gestured to a mural, a raven soaring over a starless sky, its wings scattering shards of light.
"Your ancestors stole the Duskheir's purpose. They bound it to blood, to ritual. But the first guardian was like you—a rootless shadow. A choice, not a curse."
Ethan's cloak stirred, resonating with the mural's energy.
"Then help me stop what's coming."
Nari's gaze fell to the raven. "It has already begun."
That night, the void struck the Ashirai's sacred wellspring—a pool of liquid starlight that had fueled their rituals for millennia. Ethan arrived to find the water thrashing, tendrils of green-black corruption strangling its glow. The raven dove into the chaos, its wings shredding the void's grasp.
"It's adapting," Ethan muttered, weaving his will into a blade of pure light. "Using what it learned from the Veyras."
Nari watched, her tattoos blazing.
"It knows you now. Your defiance… it angers the void."
Ethan severed the final tendril. The wellspring calmed, but its light dimmed.
"Then let it rage."
The Ashirai were divided. Some saw Ethan as the First Duskheir reborn; others, as a plague. Nari silenced them with a roar.
"The shadow of the Veyra line taints him, but the raven has chosen. We will heed its call."
She pressed a dagger to Ethan's palm, drawing blood.
"Your power is unshaped. Let us teach you to forge it anew."
The training was brutal. The Ashirai wielded a magic of absence—not the void's hunger, but the quiet between heartbeats, the stillness before dawn. Ethan learned to dissolve into smoke, to walk the edges of dreams, to sever a man's fear with a whisper.
But the raven grew restless.
One morning, it vanished. Ethan followed its psychic echo to a rift, where he found it perched on the shoulder of a boy—a shepherd from a nameless realm, his village devoured by the void's newest puppet, a beast of living dust, its maw a vortex of screaming faces.
Ethan slew the creature, its form unraveling into ash. The boy stared, trembling.
"Are you a god?"
"No," Ethan said. "Just a man who's good at killing monsters."
The raven cawed, its eyes now fully gold.
Nari awaited his return, her lifethread fraying. The void's attack had poisoned her.
"It targets the Ashirai… because we remember… the true Duskheir," she gasped. "The raven… it is not a guide. It is a judge."
She pressed her forehead to his.
"You must become what the Veyras could not. Not a guardian. A consequence."
Her body dissolved into stardust, her power flowing into Ethan's cloak. The Ashirai knelt, their tattoos dimming in reverence—or dread.
That night, the raven led him to the oldest rift. Beyond it stretched a battlefield of dead gods, their carcasses fueling the void's growth. Ethan sensed the Keeper there, her essence woven into the corruption.
"You're afraid," he whispered to the dark. "Because I don't need a bloodline to end you. Just a reason."
The void did not answer.
But the Ashirai did.