Six months had passed since the Rift shattered.
Six months since the sky stopped bleeding. Since the last of the Riftborn fell still. Since Jalen Grey—Ember-bearer, last flame of the Eclipse—vanished into light.
The world had changed.
It didn't go back to normal—it grew into something new.
Cities once reduced to rubble were now fields of innovation. Memorial walls glowed with names of the fallen and were ringed with laughter of young sparks learning to control the gifts they'd once feared. All over the globe, people rebuilt not just structures—but trust. A world that had teetered on extinction had learned, for the first time, how to truly stand together.
At the center of it all stood Citadel Nova.
Rebuilt from its ashes, it had become more than a base. It was now a symbol. A sanctuary. A school.
Ari took command—not as a soldier, but as a guide. She trained the next generation of guardians. She was still fierce, still fast, but now her strength came from patience, from watching those she taught find power without fear.
Reyka ran the tech division. Her lab stretched across three floors and a holographic garden. She developed portable Rift detectors, clean Ember energy, and even memory restoration tech for those who had been fractured by the war.
Pulse had become a voice to the spark-bearers of the world. She traveled city to city, helping those changed by the Rift accept themselves—and warning them that power alone meant nothing without purpose.
Nyx, true to her nature, drifted. But she always returned when needed. She became a silent shadow to the cause, watching other dimensions, listening for echoes of danger. She believed, more than any of them, that peace was never permanent.
In every corridor, every training room, every whisper of flame that lit a spark-bearer's palm—they felt him.
Jalen Grey was gone. No body. No farewell.
Only the legend.
But legends, as the world had learned, don't die.
---
One night, the sky above Citadel Nova shimmered.
A star pulsed once—then fell.
It streaked across the sky like a comet, but it didn't burn out. It descended slowly—like it knew where it was going.
The ember landed in the courtyard, softly embedded in stone.
It wasn't hot. But it glowed.
Ari was the first to reach it. She knelt, trembling.
It was a fragment of the Ember Core. Whole. Alive.
No one spoke. They didn't need to.
Something stirred inside all of them. A pulse. A whisper.
Not from beyond the Rift.
But from within themselves.
Jalen hadn't died. He'd become something more. A guardian not of one world—but of many. A flame that would never extinguish. A signal, waiting. Watching.
And when the day came—when the sky darkened again, when the cracks reappeared, when the shadows rose—Earth wouldn't be alone.
Because Eclipse always rises again.
---
To be continued.....