The world around Collins shimmered like a mirage.Grey sand stretched endlessly in every direction, but the air glittered faintly with drifting motes of golden ash that never touched the ground. The sky above him was fractured — streaks of light and shadow swirling like slow-moving currents in water.He sat up slowly, his heart still racing. The last thing he remembered was the Arch exploding in light. Now… silence. No Avera. No Elyndra. Only that faint whisper of wind that didn’t feel like air at all.“Where are they…” he murmured, his voice small in the vast emptiness.The ash stirred at his words, swirling in a circle before him. Shapes began to form — first the outline of a city, then faces, then nothing.It was like the world was trying to remember itself.Collins got to his feet and began walking toward the tower he’d seen earlier. It loomed far in the distance — a black spire laced with crimson veins of light, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.Each step he took echoed twice

When Collins opened his eyes, he expected fire, chaos—maybe silence.Instead, he saw a sky that shimmered like water, rippling between gold and indigo.The land stretched endlessly below him, green and alive, yet strange. Mountains floated lazily in the air, and rivers ran upward into the clouds.He wasn’t in the Ash Realm anymore.He wasn’t even in his own world.“This…” he murmured, stepping onto the soft ground that pulsed faintly beneath his boots. “This is the First World—the cradle of the elements.”The air hummed as if it heard him. A wind stirred, circling him like an unseen presence. Then, from that breeze, came whispers—faint, ancient, and melodic.> “Bearer of the Fifth… why do you come?”Collins turned sharply, his hand instinctively flaring with a thread of flame. “I came to find the truth.”The wind laughed softly. “Truth burns brighter than lies, young flame. Can you withstand its heat?”The ground cracked.Shapes began to rise from the earth—four colossal figures, each

The dreams began quietly.At first, they were nothing more than flickers—blurred images that vanished the moment Collins opened his eyes. He saw flashes of fire, a cracked crystal, a woman with silver hair calling his name through the storm. But when he woke, all he remembered was the smell of ash and the sound of a heart that wasn’t his own.For weeks, life in the valley remained peaceful. Collins helped the old woman—known in the village as Matra—tend her garden, repair fences, and gather herbs. He was calm, kind, ordinary.At least, that’s what everyone saw.But inside him, something was restless.Every night, his dreams deepened. The same whisper followed him through the haze:> “Remember the fire… before it remembers you.”One evening, Matra found him standing by the stream, staring into the water. The surface reflected the sky perfectly—until his reflection blinked.“Collins?” she asked softly.He turned sharply, startled. The image in the water rippled and faded back into norma

The five pillars of light still shimmered faintly against the morning sky when Collins reached the valley’s edge. He could feel them — like distant heartbeats pulsing through the air, resonating deep within his chest. Each one carried a different rhythm, a different element.Wind. Water. Fire. Earth. Spirit.And somewhere between them all was the Fifth Flame, the one that should never have existed.Matra’s words echoed in his mind: “You are the balance, Collins. Not the flame’s prisoner.” But after what he saw in the Gate, after hearing Nihareth’s voice inside him, those words felt more like a plea than truth.The world had changed overnight. The trees bent away from him as he passed. Animals hid from his presence. Even the air around him shimmered with faint heat, like the line between two worlds was thinning.Still, he walked on. He had to.---By dusk, Collins reached the shore of the Whispering Lake — the first place one of the light pillars had touched. The air there was damp and

The northern wind bit like teeth. Collins pulled his cloak tighter as he climbed through the frozen passes. Days had passed since the battle with Kaelor, and though his strength had grown, so had the weight in his chest.The amber shard inside his pendant pulsed softly, joined with his flame — a flicker of earth and fire in uneasy harmony. But the farther north he went, the weaker it became. The cold seemed to devour the light.Snow fell endlessly, a whispering storm that erased all sound. Sometimes he thought he heard voices within it — laughter, cries, faint songs. The mountains of ice were alive with echoes.By the fourth day, he reached a frozen plain where the ground gleamed like glass. In the distance stood a vast palace carved entirely from ice, its spires shimmering beneath an aurora of pale blue light.The Frost-Bound Kingdom.He approached cautiously, his breath curling in white ribbons. The closer he drew, the colder it became — so cold that even the flame in his core began