The night air in Elarion City was thick with fog. Lamps burned low along the cobblestone streets, flickering as if whispering secrets to the darkness. Collins walked alone, his hood drawn over his face, the faint pulse of the orb still warm in his pocket.He shouldn’t have returned to the city. Not after the Hunters of Veylar had marked him. But something had been calling to him in his dreams — a voice that sounded almost… familiar.> “Find the mark beneath the temple ruins… and you will find me.”His mother’s voice.Collins stopped in front of an abandoned shrine. The stone archway was cracked, vines crawling over the carvings. The name had long faded, but he could feel it — the energy beneath it. It thrummed through the ground, soft but alive, like a heartbeat buried deep below.He knelt, pressing his palm against the stone. The moment his skin touched it, the orb in his pocket flared, glowing through the fabric of his cloak.Then the ground moved.Rumbling echoed through the ruins

The light faded slowly, like the last breath of a dying flame.When Collins opened his eyes, he found himself lying in ash. The sky above him was dark crimson, torn apart by streaks of black lightning. The ground glowed in patches — molten veins snaking across cracked earth. The air was thick with smoke and the scent of burning stone.He pushed himself up, coughing, blinking hard.“Icarion?” he called out.No answer.The only sound was the low hum of the wind and the distant crackle of fire.He was alone.Or so he thought.From the haze ahead, a faint light flickered — not red like the burning ground, but pale and cold, like a candle lost in fog. Collins hesitated, then walked toward it. Each step echoed in the eerie silence.As he got closer, he saw it: a gate, ancient and half-destroyed, forged from black stone and ember glass. Strange markings ran across its arch — runes that pulsed weakly, as if clinging to life. This must be the Gate of Cinders Icarion spoke of.But something fel

The night had no stars.Only the dim shimmer of ash drifting across the cracked horizon.Collins stood on the ridge overlooking what once might have been a valley — now only ruins and molten scars. His body still trembled from what Ravel had shown him. The air around him pulsed faintly, gold and black streams of energy weaving together like fire and smoke.He could feel it. The two within him — the flame of light and the flame of shadow — circling, wrestling for dominance.> “You already are,” Ravel’s words echoed in his head.He clenched his fists, trying to steady his breathing. “No… I’m not you.”The wind hissed across the wasteland, carrying whispers — faint voices that seemed to come from the ashes themselves. He couldn’t make out the words, but they all sounded the same: burn, rise, fall.Suddenly, a figure appeared from the haze ahead.She was cloaked in gray, moving with eerie calm, her eyes glowing faint silver.> “You survived the Gate,” she said softly. “Few do.”Collins to

Silence.Then, a heartbeat.Then another — slow, heavy, echoing like thunder in a void.Collins opened his eyes.He wasn’t standing anymore. He was floating, surrounded by an endless expanse of shifting mist and ember light. The floor — if it could be called that — rippled like molten glass beneath him.His flame burned faintly in his chest, but it didn’t hurt this time. It hummed, as though it recognized the place.> “You hear it, don’t you?”The voice came from behind him — calm, knowing.Collins turned sharply. A man stood there — tall, cloaked in black flame that didn’t consume. His eyes glowed faintly gold, the same shade as Collins’s own when his power awakened.Collins froze. “You…”The man smiled gently. “Yes. It’s me.”“Father?” Collins whispered.The man nodded. “Eron Lutherchris. Once a guardian of the Flame. Now… a memory bound to this place.”Collins’s breath caught. He’d imagined this moment a thousand times — questions piling in his chest for years. Why did you leave? W

The sky split apart.Lightning crashed in sheets across the Zephyr Range, turning night into violent daylight. Wind howled in every direction, a scream from the heavens themselves. And in the middle of it all, Collins stood on a jagged cliff, his flame barely visible against the tempest’s fury.Lyra shouted something behind him, but the storm swallowed her words.The Leviathan emerged fully now — a monstrous serpent made of living wind and thunder, its body stretching for miles. Its eyes blazed like molten suns. Every breath it took tore clouds into ribbons.> “So… you are the one who woke the Throne,” the creature’s voice rolled through the air like thunder. “You who bear the Fifth Flame — the end and the beginning.”Collins steadied his stance, his heart hammering. “I don’t want to destroy anything. I’m here to fix what I broke.”The Leviathan coiled, lightning sparking from its scales. “Then prove your heart is stronger than the storm.”The wind struck first.A cyclone slammed into