The world felt quieter after Ashveil’s destruction, yet the silence was unnatural like the hush before thunder splits the sky. Kael and Selene moved through a stretch of blackened forest, the trees twisted and half burned, their branches humming faintly with dormant aura.For hours, neither spoke. Only the rhythmic crunch of ash underfoot accompanied them.Finally, Selene broke the silence. “You felt it too, didn’t you? The Dominion wasn’t attacking. It was awakening.”Kael nodded slowly, eyes reflecting the faint silver glow from the shard. “Each time I fight using the shard’s resonance, it sends a pulse across the lattice. It’s like… ringing a bell the world hasn’t heard in centuries.”Selene frowned. “And what happens when it finally answers back?”Kael stopped walking. The question lingered in the air like smoke.“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I think something or someone is already trying to reach me.”He raised his hand, letting the shard hover slightly above his palm. The ai

The climb began before dawn.Kael and Selene ascended the final stretch of the Ardent Peaks, hands raw from gripping stone that hummed faintly beneath their touch. Lightning slithered across the mountainside like veins of living light, branching through the cliffs in patterns too precise to be natural. Each pulse synchronized faintly with Kael’s heartbeat.“The whole mountain’s alive,” Selene murmured. Her voice was quiet but steady, breath clouding the cold air.Kael nodded. “These aren’t just storms. The Dominion’s current runs through here, the last unbroken artery.”They pressed upward through a canyon of jagged pillars. The air vibrated with energy so dense it blurred the edges of sound. When the first thunder cracked overhead, the echo didn’t fade, it lingered, repeating like a word trying to form itself. Return… Vessel…Selene winced. “It’s talking again.”“It’s not talking,” Kael said, his eyes narrowing. “It’s remembering.”They reached a ledge overlooking a vast valley carv

The first light of dawn stretched across the shattered ridge like a blade drawn from its sheath.Kael and Selene trudged through the dust, their silhouettes long and wavering, framed by the red sun rising over the ruins of the Veins.Neither spoke for a while. The world was too raw for words.Selene adjusted her cloak against the wind. “You didn’t say what it showed you,” she said finally.Kael’s steps slowed, boots crunching softly on grit. “A memory,” he said. “But not mine.”“Valen’s?”He nodded once. “His last moments. He wasn’t trying to conquer the Dominion… he was trying to contain it.”Selene frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. The archives call him the Betrayer.”Kael looked out over the horizon, where the air still shimmered faintly, remnants of the storm they’d escaped. “Maybe history doesn’t remember what sacrifice looks like.”The wind carried silence between them again, a silence that felt heavi

The Hollow Sanctuary had grown restless.By the time Kael and Selene reached the upper antechamber, the air itself felt alive, every breath humming with static, every wall faintly breathing light. The glyphs etched across the stone had begun to move, rearranging themselves into new shapes, as though rewriting their own history.Selene pressed a palm against one wall. “It’s shifting again. These markings weren’t here before.”Kael stared at the flowing script, fragments of the Dominion’s language laced with symbols he didn’t recognize. “It’s rewriting itself to mirror my resonance,” he said quietly. “Like it’s… trying to understand what I’ve become.”“Or trying to decide if it should destroy you,” Selene muttered.He didn’t argue.They stopped near a collapsed hallway where moonlight spilled through a broken skylight. The light caught the aura threads running along Kael’s arm, silver turning faintly crimson, like two heartbeats clashing beneath his skin.Selene noticed. “It’s getting w

The storm had a pulse.Kael could feel it under his skin, each crack of thunder syncing with the rhythm of his heart. Lightning clawed across the sky, washing the Hollow Sanctuary in flashes of violent white. The ancient stones shimmered, every carved symbol igniting as though recognizing what was about to happen.Selene stood a few paces behind, her cloak snapping in the wind. Her eyes darted between the two men, Kael, breath uneven but defiant, and Ardyn, calm and terrible, the storm bending subtly toward him. The air itself felt brittle, like glass under pressure.Ardyn’s boots struck the wet ground softly as he advanced, each step resonating through the valley. His golden aura shimmered like molten glass, controlled, poised, predatory. “You shouldn’t exist,” he said. His tone wasn’t anger, it was statement, simple and final. “The Core was never meant to split.”Kael’s blade tilted slightly toward the ground, faint trails of silver aura burning