The violet flames didn’t burn. They shimmered, weightless, like starlight caught in a storm. Rashford stepped onto the stone platform. Lysa stood at its center hands bare, blades sheathed, face unguarded.The last time he saw her alive, she was twelve. Now she was a storm in human form. And yet, in her eyes… was recognition. A flicker of something real. “Rash,” she said softly. He froze.No one had called him that since Oakwood. She stepped closer, slowly. No tricks. No blades. “You came.”“I had to,” he said.A dozen feet between them. That was all. “You died,” he said, voice barely steady.“I should have,” she replied. “I wanted to.”He flinched. She looked away. “But they wouldn’t let me.”“The Empire?”“The forge.”He blinked. “You awakened back then?”She nodded. “When they burned the village… I woke screaming. They found me among the ash.”Her hand lifted slightly. The mark on her wrist pulsed. Violet Soulbrand.“You were Soulbound too,” he whispered.“No,” she said quietly. “I

The earth shook, Chunks of stone crashed down the mountainside as an obsidian tower tore through the ground like a blade through skin. Flames licked the air, not red but blue, cold soulfire, ancient and patient.Rashford stood frozen, the broken Equilibrium Blade limp in his hand. The forge inside him throbbed like a second heart.This was not Lysa’s doing. This was older. Deeper, The woman who had summoned it, the Chainkeeper stood calm amid the quake, her crimson cloak unmoving, as if the storm bowed around her.Aelira stirred behind him, groaning. Thren was already shielding her with a low wall of stone magic, eyes locked on the rising tower. Rashford spoke without turning. “This is a Soulbind relic?”The Chainkeeper’s voice was low and resonant. “This is your family’s debt made manifest. The forge chose your bloodline to wield its flame. But the throne demands more than power it demands balance.”Rashford winced, glancing down at the cracked blade in his hand. “I had it. For one m