The fires had gone quiet.And in their silence, a new fear settled across the Hollow Crown.Kael had not woken.Two days had passed since the god was bound, and yet he remained motionless, sprawled across the altar’s scorched stone like a man both slain and sanctified. His chest rose faintly. His breath stirred the dust. But his soul—his presence—was distant, buried somewhere beyond reach.Raen stood guard alone now. The others refused to come close.They whispered that Kael was no longer what he was.They whispered that he had become something… worse.Raen didn’t care.He wiped the blood from Kael’s face each morning. Replaced the bandages across his shoulder. Watched for any flicker of consciousness, any twitch of recognition.But Kael remained in the hollow between worlds.And the Hollow Crown, for the first time in its long, cursed history, pulsed with dread.⸻Somewhere deep beneath that stone circle, Kael dreamed.It was not memory.It was not vision.It was… return.He stood in

The sky cracked with no thunder.Across the southern mountains, where the Gate had once wept darkness in silence, something stirred beneath the stone. It did not rise, not yet. But it watched.And it waited.Kael stood on the balcony of the Hollow Crown, arms folded as the sun bled through a sky bruised with ash and memory. Below, the great fortress-city of Yvaroth stirred. Black banners flew again for the first time in centuries. His banners. The sigil of the hollow flame was stitched over the walls, painted in fresh blood, raised above the broken temples.“Word has reached every stronghold,” Raen said from behind him. “House Serath answered first. They’re marching with ten thousand spears from the Ebon Fields.”Kael didn’t turn. “And the Ash Mothers?”“They sent a box. No message. Just a heart carved from obsidian.”Kael’s brow furrowed. “A heart?”Raen nodded. “Still beating.”Kael let silence answer that.He didn’t need their loyalty.Only their fear.He turned at last, walking ba

The wind over the Northern Expanse was no longer just wind.It carried the scent of rusted gods and blood turned to ash. As Kael stepped off the last ridge before the edge of the world, the land beneath him groaned like a beast in chains.The Gate was close.He could feel it in his bones. In his blood. In the ache behind his teeth that hadn’t dulled since the mirror whispered his future back to him.Varyn walked beside him in silence. Raen was ahead, scouting the last hundred meters of the jagged path. Behind them came the Warborn—his chosen few, no longer just soldiers, but something heavier, darker. Every one of them had tasted the Void at least once and survived. Barely.No banners. No music.Only purpose.Kael paused at a rise. The Gate valley stretched below. Broken pillars loomed like giant ribs jutting from earth. The seal had split. The outer edges shimmered like black oil in firelight.But it wasn’t open yet.Not fully.Not until he got closer.Raen returned, panting. “Moveme

The wind changed before dawn.Kael felt it in his bones before the sentries blew the blackhorn. A cold shift. Not just in weather. In the world itself. It came with a scent, metallic and sharp, like rusting iron soaked in rain. He rose from his cot before the knock came.Raen stood at the door, armored and tense. “They’re here.”Kael didn’t ask who.He already knew.The gates of the Hollow Crown opened with a groan that echoed through the cliffs. On the plains below, a host had gathered—one that had not walked these lands for a thousand years.The Scorchborn.Not men. Not beasts. Creatures of war forged in the forgotten furnaces beneath the Crimson Ravine. Armored in molten obsidian. Bones wired with fire. Eyes that wept flame.At their head rode a figure swathed in smoke and chainmail, mounted on a mount with ribs exposed and hooves that cracked stone.Kael descended the high path with Raen and Varyn at his side. Behind him, a hundred of his strongest—Ashbound knights, Palefang sword

The wind in the valley did not howl.It whispered.It whispered names that had not been spoken since the world bled light. Names older than blood, older than gods. Names Kael had buried deep inside him, locked in dreams sealed with iron and fire.Now they returned.One by one.And they wanted out.The council room was deathly quiet.Not because of fear.Because of awe.Kael stood before the black table, hands stained with the ash of the last battlefield, armor cracked at the shoulder where a revenant blade had nearly pierced through. The war was no longer distant. It pressed at their gates.“They have breached the outer wards,” Varyn said without looking up from the map. “The southern pass no longer holds. We’ve lost the chainward posts. And the undead march with a new formation. Something is controlling them.”Kael stared at the center of the war map where the Gate pulsed like a fresh wound. “It’s not something. It’s someone.”Raen leaned forward, brow tight. “You’ve seen him again?”