The moment Kael stepped across the broken threshold of the ruined sanctum, the air shifted. Not with wind, but with intent. The stones beneath his boots vibrated, not from quakes, but from memory. This place remembered pain. And blood. And betrayal.Above him, where a dome had once sheltered the high altar, now only jagged ribs of obsidian remained, stabbing toward the red sky like the bones of a dead god.“This is where they bled the first Gatekeeper,” Lira whispered. She stood beside him, her voice low. “And fed his soul to the Veiled One.”Kael said nothing. The spiral in his palm itched, pulsing like a second heartbeat.Behind them, Nyra kept her blade drawn. She did not trust the silence. Nor the shadows coiling just out of reach. Something watched them. Not with eyes, but with hunger. And not one thing.Many.“This is where it started,” Kael said at last. “But it won’t be where it ends.”He stepped forward, toward the center of the sanctum. At his feet, ancient carvings glowed f

The mountain winds howled like dying beasts.Kael climbed higher, his fingers bleeding where they scraped against stone. The path was no path at all—just a crumbled ledge winding around the spine of the world, laced with frost and memories he didn’t want to remember. Behind him, the skies were burning with the firestorm of what they had unleashed. Ahead, only mist. Thick, silver, and unnatural. It didn’t move with the wind. It breathed.Lira’s voice cut through it. “Kael, we’re close.”He didn’t answer.His body ached. Every step was a war. But the mark on his palm flared, guiding him forward. Not with pain. With pull. Like something ahead was calling him. Something ancient. Something patient.Nyra appeared from the mist at his side, her cloak fluttering like shadow stitched into the air. “This peak,” she murmured. “They say the gods died here.”“They didn’t,” Kael said, his voice raw. “They turned into something worse.”The moment they crossed the final ridge, the fog broke.And ther

The air stank of iron and burned magic.Kael stepped over the bodies of the corrupted sentinels, his boots scraping through shattered bone and seared armor. The crimson light from the ruined vault above poured down in trembling shafts, casting the chamber in flickering fire. The silence that followed the slaughter wasn’t peace. It was breath held by the world.Behind him, the others limped forward.Lira had a gash down her shoulder, her cloak torn and dark with blood. Her sword hand didn’t shake, but her breath came in shallow bursts. Nyra moved like a ghost, quiet, unreadable, though Kael had seen the twitch in her fingers. She had nearly called on the Forbidden Flame again.Nearly.Kael didn’t look at them for long. His eyes stayed fixed on the altar ahead.The throne of ash.It sat in the center of a broken circle, carved from petrified roots and obsidian, its back tall, curving like horns. Around it, sigils had been scorched into the floor—sigils from another age, older than the c

The ash did not fall anymore.It hung—suspended in the air like dust trapped in a dream. The land beyond the Hollow Spire was dead quiet. No screams, no wind, not even the echo of footsteps behind Kael. Just the sound of his breathing, steady and cold.Behind him, the others stood frozen. Nyra’s hand was still outstretched where she had tried to reach him. Lira’s blade hovered inches from her side, half drawn but unused. And Aetheron, the last of the Flamebound, kept his distance—eyes wide with something Kael had not seen in him before.Fear.Kael stood before the altar.It was not stone. It was not metal.It was bone.Piled into the shape of a throne, carved by something that had never used tools. Something that shaped matter through memory alone. Atop it sat no king. Only a crown.Forged of silence.Wreathed in whispers.It pulsed like a heartbeat.Kael stepped forward.The moment his foot crossed the shadow of the throne, the world twisted.No sound. No light. Just pull.It dragged

They thought the storm had passed.They were wrong.The sky over the Hollow Crown had held still for three days. Not a cloud moved. Not a bird flew. Not a wind dared whisper. Kael stood at the edge of the god-altar, a broken piece of obsidian clutched in his hand. His breath drew frost from the air, even though fire still licked at the edges of the horizon behind him.Below, the war council waited. Varyn stood by the gate, wrapped in ravensteel, a sharp line of shadow against the dawn. Raen was already pacing inside the sanctum, studying the fractured sigils carved into the floor. And somewhere far beneath them, the last Herald still hung in chains, whispering to nothing and everything.Kael turned the obsidian in his hand.It wasn’t a weapon.It was a tooth.And it had fallen from his own mouth.⸻“The blood isn’t yours anymore,” Varyn said without turning.Kael stepped down from the altar. “Then whose is it?”“You know the answer.”He walked past her, boots loud against the cold sto