The forge was still. Not silent, but holding its breath.Kael stood in the strategy chamber, flame-maps flickering in the air before him, showing the broken lands around the ruins of Solkar. Runes danced across the map, markers of void-cult movement, sightings of Ash Cloaks, energy spikes unnatural even to Flamebound senses.And in the center: a growing dead zone. No fire. No light. Just cold. Selune entered, hood drawn, the mark beneath her tunic still aching from the vision in the ember mirror. “You’re taking me with you,” she said.Kael turned, his jaw tight. “You’re still marked.”She nodded. “That’s exactly why.”I. Assembly of Fire. The team was small by design. Kael, carrying Emberwrath. Selune, bearing the Third Flame and the gate-mark, Eris, the rune specialist and field strategist, Thorne, a silent warrior once from the Crimson Brand, now loyal to Kael alone.Layari, flame-monk of the Kindled Lotus, their spiritual anchor. Their mission was simple: Infiltrate the Solkar ruin

The stars grew dim as the ship crossed into uncharted skies. Below them stretched a land that maps refused to show a vast dead region called the Throat of the Void, where nothing grew, no wind blew, and even magic grew still. It was the graveyard of forgotten gods. A place where names went to die.Alan stood at the helm. Each breath he took felt heavier. The Seventh Pillar pulsed faintly inside his chest, not like a power waiting to be used, but a question waiting to be asked. And the closer they drew, the louder that question became: “Do you deserve the truth?”Descent into Nothing. The airship could go no farther. The moment its shadow crossed into the Throat’s rim, its runes flickered and died. Gravity twisted sideways. Time unraveled. They disembarked in silence. The ground below was black sand, dry and echoless. No insects. No life. Only bones and ash. Colossal skeletons half-buried in the earth whispered of gods who had once ruled, fallen, and been forgotten.Kaela looked around

The sun rose over the Throat of the Void. Not as it had for thousands of years, dim and dying, but new. Brighter. As if the sky itself had taken a deep breath for the first time in eons. Alan stood at the ridge, his cloak billowing in the wind, eyes fixed on the horizon. The throne was gone. The Architect vanished. And in their place, something far more dangerous had taken root: Possibility.A World Reshaped. All across the lands, the old order collapsed. Temples that once channeled divine power now sat silent. Priests wept as relics disintegrated in their hands. Magic shifted, no longer bound by the Seven Pillars, but by the will and intent of those who used it.The Sapphire Council? Dissolved. The Sky Reaches? Descended from the heavens, merging into mortal lands. And in the slums of forgotten cities, where fire once feared to burn, children began to dream of stars that listened. Alan had broken the cycle. But in doing so, he had unleashed the unknown.The Scattered Fellowship. In t

The Nameless God did not move. It simply was, a silence that swallowed reason, a void where the concept of identity frayed like old thread. Alan stood still in the center of the formless chamber, his heartbeat the only sound. Ashbreaker hung heavy at his side, not from weight, but doubt.He finally asked, “What are you?” The spiral-eyed shadow answered in a voice that bent the walls of his mind:“I am what was removed to make the world clean I am dissonance. The memory no one dares keep. The possibility no god allowed. The first story, before the First Flame.” Alan’s breath caught. This wasn’t just a forgotten god. It was the truth that didn't fit.The Forgotten Flame. The Nameless God reached into Alan’s chest, not with a hand, but with a pull. Visions slammed into him. A world where the Pillars were prisons, not gifts. A timeline where Alan never existed, yet the world fell anyway. A fire that did not purify, but consumed meaning itself.The Eighth Flame, not destruction, not creati

Hollowdeep burned. But not with flame. With memory.The gate, severed from its anchor, now lashed out blindly, like a wounded beast whose tether had been suddenly cut. It reached into places it was never meant to touch: people’s dreams, the roots of old trees, the bones of buildings that had stood a thousand years.And where it touched? Forgetting followed. The names of streets disappeared. Children forgot their own faces. Even the fire trembled, unsure if it was still fire at all. And Kael… Kael remembered nothing about her. But he knew something was missing. And that something was starting to return.I. Fractures in the FlameLayari moved through Hollowdeep like a healer in a battlefield hospital. Only the wounds she treated were identity. One soldier didn’t remember his brother. A blacksmith no longer knew how to forge. A mother screamed because she knew she had a daughter,but couldn’t recall her name, or her face. Kael watched, hollow, as Layari lit memory-sigils at the corners of