The capital of Sanctuary shimmered beneath a stormless sky, its crystal spires catching the late afternoon light. To a casual eye, all was well. Traders bustled in the outer markets. Messengers darted between towers. Children chased echoes across the polished stone plazas.But deep below—where sunlight never reached and the stone whispered of older things—something pulsed.Not light.Not flame.But Void.Sarah moved quickly through the catacombs beneath the Council District, flanked by two Ashborn escorts and a Seer from the Reconstruction Circle. Her boots struck stone with practiced rhythm, the echo swallowed quickly by the oddly oppressive silence.The lower levels hadn’t been used since the days of the Gatekeeper War. Abandoned halls, old flame storage sites, forgotten sanctums built long before even the first Flame Net towers rose. Wards should’ve kept this area dormant.But they’d failed.And now something beat beneath the stone. A pulse that matched no known magic.“Report,” Sa

A slight flicker when Samuel summoned the flame—barely visible to the others. A shimmer at the edges of his skin, like reality trying to reject his existence for a breath.He thought it was fatigue.Stress.Grief.But now, it had reached his forearm.And today—he almost didn’t come back.The training fields of Sanctuary were quiet in the early dawn. Morning mist clung to the grass, and the old flame dummies stood untouched. It was the only place Samuel could test his limits without watchers, at least for a few hours.He raised his right hand, summoning fire.At first, it obeyed—rising in that familiar spiral of warmth and light, golden-white, alive.But then—Snap.Like a string inside him broke.The fire turned jagged.His arm flared with pain, and for one terrifying second, it vanished. Not invisibly. It was gone. Fingers, skin, muscle—just space where his hand should have been. Then—Flash.It returned.But it came with blood.Samuel collapsed to one knee, gasping.His palm—once fl

Torchlight flickered dimly in the corridor as Sarah descended the spiral staircase, her steps slow and deliberate. Each footfall echoed off the walls like the beat of a war drum. The air down here smelled of iron, burnt ozone, and something older—decay laced with residual magic.She paused before the last cell.Inside sat the prisoner. Once a proud Sentinel, he now looked like something torn halfway between time and reality. His armor hung from him like dead skin, half-fused with the flesh beneath. Eyes that should’ve been human were milky with distortion, as though staring through ten layers of fractured glass.He smiled the moment he saw her."General Sarah." His voice came out warped, overlapping with itself. “You’re later than I expected.”Sarah said nothing at first. She studied him—how his fingers twitched as if playing an invisible harp, how his neck tilted at angles not meant for bone. She’d seen this before. Time-warped exposure. The result of too long in proximity to the Voi

The storm reached Sanctuary before dawn—not a storm of wind or rain, but of whispers carried through the ley lines.It began in the Southern Realm.The Shrine of Emberfall, long dormant since the Gatekeeper’s fall, had always pulsed faintly with residual energy. Once a sacred place of communion for flamebearers, it now served as a quiet monument, left under watch but largely forgotten.Until it screamed.A pulse—a shockwave of impossible magic—rippled across the Flame Net. Alarms ignited across the high towers of Sanctuary, turning the sky red with warning. Communication crystals shattered across multiple relay points. Guardians scrambled.By the time the report reached Samuel, he was already awake. Sitting on the edge of his cot, barefoot, hands clenched at his temples. Sweat clung to his skin, though the room was cold.He hadn’t slept. Couldn’t sleep. Not since Lin vanished and returned with her eyes like voidglass.He felt it before they even knocked on his door.A burn behind his

The capital of Sanctuary shimmered beneath a stormless sky, its crystal spires catching the late afternoon light. To a casual eye, all was well. Traders bustled in the outer markets. Messengers darted between towers. Children chased echoes across the polished stone plazas.But deep below—where sunlight never reached and the stone whispered of older things—something pulsed.Not light.Not flame.But Void.Sarah moved quickly through the catacombs beneath the Council District, flanked by two Ashborn escorts and a Seer from the Reconstruction Circle. Her boots struck stone with practiced rhythm, the echo swallowed quickly by the oddly oppressive silence.The lower levels hadn’t been used since the days of the Gatekeeper War. Abandoned halls, old flame storage sites, forgotten sanctums built long before even the first Flame Net towers rose. Wards should’ve kept this area dormant.But they’d failed.And now something beat beneath the stone. A pulse that matched no known magic.“Report,” Sa