Callan stood on the outer wall of Valmere as dawn painted the sky in gold and rose. The battle was won, but the price hung in the air—sharp as blood, heavy as ash. Bodies were still being recovered. The bone-tree had vanished, leaving only a scorched crater where it once loomed. No trace of the Pale Hand remained—except for the fragments of his scythe, now locked away in the town's vault.
Ren joined him in silence, followed by Seris, chewing dried root as if this were just another morning.
"Reports are in," Ren said. "Thirty-seven dead, seventy wounded. But it could've been worse."
"Should've been worse," Seris added. "Your little fire trick saved us."
Callan said nothing.
Because that "trick" had come with a cost.
When he opened himself to the Thronefire again, it didn't just empower him—it called to something. He felt it stirring. Watching. As if ancient embers once buried in the deepest part of him were beginning to breathe.
He clenched his fist. It didn't burn this time. But it remembered.
Later That Day: The Vault
Callan descended into Valmere's underground vault—once a storage for taxes and grains, now repurposed for something far more dangerous.
Inside a stone chest wrapped in sealing runes lay the shards of the Pale Hand's scythe. Even broken, they pulsed with energy—cold, malevolent, whispering in a language no man should understand.
A woman stood nearby, inspecting them. Her skin was bronze, her hair braided into a tight crown, her robes marked with sigils from the Arcanum Collegiate.
"High Magister Solenne," Callan greeted.
"General." She didn't look up. "You've brought me a problem."
"That scythe—was it forged by the Ashen Order?"
Solenne frowned. "No. It's older. Far older. This isn't a weapon. It's a key."
"A key to what?"
She finally met his gaze. "To something they want. Something sealed centuries ago beneath the Cradle Mountains."
Callan narrowed his eyes. "Then we'll destroy it."
"You can't," she said bluntly. "Not without opening the thing it's meant to unlock."
"Then we hide it."
"Too late. They know you have it. They'll come."
Meanwhile: Citadel of Ash
The Severed Prophet stood at the edge of a dark altar, watching a basin of obsidian water ripple with visions. The Pale Hand's final moments replayed again and again—flames, fury, and the man who bore them.
"Callan Routh," the Prophet hissed.
Around him, the Ashen Order's inner circle knelt in reverence. One of them, a woman whose face was obscured by a veil of soot, raised her head.
"Shall I retrieve the key, my Prophet?"
"No," he murmured. "You shall awaken the next vessel."
The room darkened.
Chains rattled in the distance.
And something monstrous laughed in the shadows.
Three Days Later: The Road to Cradle Mountains
Callan, Ren, Seris, and a squad of elite riders made their way through narrow passes into the mountain range. Snow capped the peaks, and the wind whispered like voices through the pines.
They followed old maps—paths from an age when kingdoms were carved by sword and sorcery. Callan rode in silence, the scythe fragment stored in a sealed iron case beside him.
Ren broke the quiet. "We should have burned the damn thing."
"And risk opening what it seals?" Callan replied.
"You think going toward it is better?"
"Sometimes," Callan said, "the only way to stop a curse is to face its source."
Cradlehold
They arrived at an abandoned monastery nestled between cliffs—Cradlehold, the last known outpost of the Ember Saints.
Time had not been kind to it.
Walls crumbled. Statues lay decapitated. Snow buried the great bell.
Yet the moment Callan stepped onto its grounds, he felt it.
Power.
Not of the Ashen Order. But something deeper.
Solenne had arrived hours before them, having teleported ahead using Collegiate gateways. She met them in the great hall.
"This place," she said, "is a failsafe. The Ember Saints built it to house what they feared most."
Callan stepped toward the altar in the center. "And what's that?"
"You," she said flatly. "Or what you might become."
Echoes of Fire
That night, Callan explored the inner sanctum of Cradlehold alone.
As he passed ancient murals, he saw stories written in paint and ash: battles between flame-touched warriors and shadow beasts, cities consumed by holy fire, a general crowned in light and devoured by it.
One figure appeared again and again—an armored warrior with fire in his veins, feared and revered. In the final mural, he was shown chained beneath a mountain, surrounded by runes.
Callan froze.
The warrior's face was his own.
Suddenly, the chamber trembled. The runes glowed.
And Callan heard a voice—not from the past, not from outside—but from within.
"We are not done yet."
He collapsed to his knees.
Images burned in his mind—wars he hadn't fought, flames he hadn't conjured, lives he hadn't ended.
Yet all of them were him.
The Ashen Response
That same night, the Ashen Order struck.
They came not by roads, but by air—carried on winged beasts of bone and smoke. They dropped from the sky, masked and chanting, blades drawn, eyes glowing with madness.
The alarm was raised.
Flames lit the mountains.
Ren fought atop the monastery steps, arrows flying like lightning. Seris cut through three cultists with a single spin, laughing as blood splattered her face.
Solenne erected wards, screaming incantations to hold the skies at bay.
Callan burst from the sanctum, half-dazed but burning with purpose. The fire inside him surged again—brighter, cleaner this time.
He raised his sword. It ignited in white-gold light.
"WITH ME!" he roared.
The battle for Cradlehold began.