The world was silent. The storm was gone. The black fire that had swallowed the crater, the shadow that had loomed like an endless sky, gone, burned away in a single, blinding flash.What remained was ruin. Stone melted into rivers of glass. Towers collapsed into ash. The once-living streets were nothing but scorched skeletons under a dim, smoke-choked sky.At the center of it all, Jason lay broken in the dust. His body convulsed with shallow breaths, lungs tearing with every inhale.He forced his hands into the dirt, claws of stone digging under his nails as he dragged himself upright. His vision spun, half the world black, the other half painted in streaks of red fire. But none of it mattered. Only one thing did.“Aria…”His voice was hoarse, barely a rasp, but it carried into the silence like a prayer. He staggered forward, every step agony. His legs gave out, and he crawled, palms cutting open on shards of melted glass.His blood smeared across the ground as he pulled himself towa

The ground shook with a rhythm like a heartbeat. A heartbeat far too massive to belong to anything mortal.The figure that rose from the crater was a furnace given form. Plates of molten armor dripped with liquid flame, sealing and unsealing like a living wound.Its mask glowed with cracks of light, no mouth, no nose, only two white flares where eyes should be, eyes that fixed immediately on Jason. The First Ember.Kael dropped to one knee without thinking, his instincts screaming reverence and terror. His sword vibrated in his grip as though the ancient being’s presence alone threatened to rip it apart.Aria clutched at Jason’s arm, barely conscious, but her lips shaped words: “Jason… run…”But Jason couldn’t move. He wasn’t just staring at the First Ember, he was connected to it. The ember in his chest burned so violently that he thought it might burst from his body.Each pulse inside him matched the colossal being’s stride as it climbed from the molten fissure. And yet, for all its

The silence was unbearable. Aria’s scream had cut through the battlefield like broken glass, but now, now there was only the hollow sound of her breath, ragged and trembling as she clutched Jason’s limp body against her chest. His skin was cold. Colder than it should have been.“Jason,” she whispered, shaking him as though her desperation could drag him back from whatever abyss had claimed him. “Don’t you dare, don’t you dare leave me now”But his head lolled against her shoulder, cracks in his skin glowing faintly, like dying embers at the end of a fire. His chest moved, barely. A flicker of breath. But the blaze that had torn gods apart only moments ago…was gone.Aria’s tears fell onto his fractured face, sizzling as they touched the faint warmth still left in him. And then the ground rumbled.The First Ember loomed above them, towering against the sky, its molten face expressionless but its voice carrying thunder. “The vessel is broken.”It extended its hand again, palm open, finge

The ground still smoked from Kael’s impossible blaze. The gods’ voices had retreated into the abyss, but the silence that followed was worse, too deep, too wrong, as though the battlefield itself was holding its breath.Aria knelt in the rubble, Jason in her arms, her body trembling as she clutched him tighter. Tears streaked her ash-stained face, but she wouldn’t let them fall freely. Not yet.She wouldn’t break. Not while Jason still breathed. Not while Kael’s fire still lingered faintly in the broken air. But Jason’s voice shattered that fragile hold.“Aria,” he rasped, his breath hot against her ear, “do it. Use my flame. Before it’s gone.”Her head whipped down, eyes blazing with denial. “No. Don’t say that. I can’t, I won’t.”Jason’s cracked lips curved into something halfway between a grimace and a smile. His body shook with every word, but his eyes…his eyes burned with the faint embers of a man who had carried far too much for far too long. “You can. You must.”A shudder ripp

Stone cracked beneath her hands as Aria pushed herself upright, her breath ragged, her veins still burning from Jason’s ember.The cavern was impossibly vast. Walls of black stone bled fire through jagged veins, rivers of molten rock coursing across the floor like serpents.The heat should have scorched her lungs, but the ember within her burned hotter, shielding her even as it threatened to consume her. And at the center, The throne.A colossus of molten steel and obsidian, carved into the very bones of the abyss. Chains thick as towers bound the figure seated upon it. They weren’t ordinary bindings, they were living fire, burning white, snaking into its limbs, chest, throat. The First Ember.Its head rose slowly, movements heavy with eternity. A hood of cracked metal obscured its face, but when it turned its gaze upon her, Aria felt the abyss quake.“Vessel…” the voice rumbled. Not speech, but vibration, resonance, as though the cavern itself had formed the word. “At last, you arri