“Love is the cruelest weapon of all—it burns long after the blade is gone.”“Don’t let him touch it!”Lyra’s voice tore through the storm, desperate, raw.Karan knelt before the crown of fire, lightning crackling around his hands. The wind whipped through the desert, carrying voices—echoes of gods long dead.“Do you hear them?” he murmured. “They’re calling for a king.”Lyra took a step forward, shielding the child in her arms. “They’re calling for their next puppet.”Karan looked up. His eyes weren’t human anymore. They shimmered gold and blue, storm and fire woven together.“Maybe that’s all I’ve ever been,” he said softly.Lyra shook her head. “No, Karan. You’re more than their curse.”The wind hissed, and the crown flared brighter. The sand beneath them turned to glass.“Step away from it,” Lyra whispered.He smiled faintly. “You forget, Lyra… I’ve never been good at obedience.”Then he placed the crown upon his head.The desert screamed.Flames spiraled into the sky, forming a pi

“Every war leaves behind one truth: power always demands an heir.”“Mother, why does the wind call my name?”Kael’s small voice broke the silence of dawn.Lyra froze. She was wrapping her torn armor when she heard it—soft, innocent, and yet laced with something that made the air tremble.She turned toward him. The boy stood barefoot in the sand, the rising sun glinting off his golden eyes. Around his feet, sparks of blue light danced like restless fireflies.“Kael,” she whispered, “come here.”He tilted his head. “It says I belong to him.”Lyra’s heart clenched. “Who?”“The one in the clouds.”The sky above rumbled.Serah burst into the tent, breathless. “The scouts just returned. He’s moving again. The Shadow King rides for the Flame Lands.”Lyra’s fingers tightened around her spear. “Then the storm comes to finish what it started.”The rebellion had grown into an army—thousands of tribes united under Lyra’s banner. The Phoenix sigil burned bright across the dunes.They marched south

“Some oaths are iron. The worst are made of love.” “Say it out loud, Lyra—what are you willing to break to get him back?” Serah’s voice rode the wind. The path knifed along a cliff, frost biting their cheeks, the ruins of Velannis a dark smear below. “My name. My crown,” Lyra said. “If I must.” “And your soul?” “He’s my son.” “That isn’t an answer.” “It’s the only one I have.” They climbed. The mountain hummed, glass veins glinting where old lightning slept. “Horses,” Serah said. Hoofbeats rolled up the gorge. A black banner with a serpent cut through the snow. Fifty Dortracy. Rael at their head. “Oathbreaker,” Serah muttered. Rael reined in, frost in his beard, eyes bright with calculation. “Queen of Flame,” he said. “Still walking into storms, I see.” “Give me a reason not to turn you to ash,” Lyra said. “You’ve bigger fires.” He jerked his chin toward the pass. “He’s already across.” “Karan,” Serah breathed. “And the boy,” Rael said. “Your little godling split a doo

“Every god is born screaming.”“Down there?” Serah’s torch guttered in the wind. The stair yawned open, black and endless.Lyra nodded once. “That’s where they took him.”Karan leaned against the wall, pale but steady. “It smells like blood and stone.”“It smells like truth,” Lyra replied. “And I’m done hiding from it.”Serah swallowed. “You’re walking into the underworld.”Lyra’s eyes burned in the dark. “Then let it remember my name.”They began to descend.Each step groaned as if the mountain still breathed. Walls wept with molten light. Whispered words rode the air, syllables from the old tongue—Vareth, ka’shun, tharim.Lyra murmured, “They’re speaking the god-tongue.”Karan brushed frost from the wall. “Translation?”“It means, The vessel awakens.”The stair twisted deeper, the air turning thick and hot. Symbols pulsed faintly in the stone, old sigils of fire and storm. Serah’s torch hissed, shrinking smaller with every step.Then they reached the first door.It was made of obsid

“Every empire is built on bones—the question is whose.”The world was gray when they woke. The fire had burned out, the mountain’s heart gone cold.Lyra stirred first, Kael’s small hand still wrapped in hers. His eyes were closed, his breath steady but faint.Serah crouched beside them, scanning the horizon. “We’re not in the mountain anymore.”They stood on a plain of black sand. The air smelled of iron and smoke, and the sky was filled with drifting embers that never burned out.Karan looked around, silent. His eyes flickered—stormlight dimmed, then brightened again. “The mountain spit us out.”Lyra rose slowly, her hair tangled with ash. “No. It birthed us into something new.”What lay before them wasn’t land—it was a graveyard. Towers half-melted from fire, statues of kings eroded to featureless stone. The ruins stretched endlessly, glowing faintly under the dark sun.Serah touched a crumbling wall. “Velannis?”Lyra shook her head. “Older. Before there were cities. Before names.”