2025-08-19 06:39:36The palace gates were broken. Smoke poured from shattered towers, and the banners of the Fallen Army flapped in the night wind. Kael and Lira crept through the ruined courtyards, stepping over corpses of soldiers and servants alike.
Everywhere they turned, the invaders’ shadows lingered. Black-robed figures with glowing eyes moved with inhuman silence, cutting down anyone who resisted.
Kael clenched his cursed blade tighter, though each heartbeat sent another wave of pain through his veins. The sword fed on him, demanding more.
Lira pressed her back against a wall, bow in hand. “This isn’t just war. This is slaughter.”
Kael nodded grimly. He had grown up in these courtyards, chasing birds, sneaking into kitchens, laughing with Lira under the stars. Now the stones ran red with blood.
From the grand hall came a cry—a voice Kael knew. His father.
“Stay back!” Kael whispered to Lira before she could protest. He dashed through the smoke and burst into the throne room.
The king of Aeloria knelt on the shattered dais, crown at his feet, surrounded by shadow-warriors. His golden armor was cracked, his sword broken. Yet he still raised his head with defiance.
“Cowards,” the king spat. “You come under darkness, but the light will burn you.”
The black warrior Kael had fought earlier stepped forward. His eyes blazed brighter as he leveled his spear at the king. “Your light is gone, old man. The kingdom falls tonight.”
Kael froze in the doorway. His father was about to die. His chest ached with rage and despair.
Kill him. Save him. Take the throne of blood, the blade whispered.
“No…” Kael muttered, fighting the urge. But his legs moved anyway, drawn by the sword’s will. He charged forward, swinging in a burst of shadow.
The shadow-warriors staggered as Kael cut through them, his blade shrieking. The black warrior turned, grinning as if Kael’s arrival had been planned.
“Ah, the boy. The heir of ash.”
Kael stood panting before his father. “I won’t let you touch him!”
The king’s eyes widened at the sight of the blade. “Kael… no… where did you—”
Before he could finish, the warrior lunged. Kael met him, sword against spear. The throne room shook with the force of their clash.
But this time, Kael wasn’t strong enough. The warrior pressed harder, his strikes too fast. Kael’s arms numbed under the onslaught.
Then the blade surged again, shadows exploding outward, slamming the warrior back. The floor cracked under the impact.
Kael’s breath came ragged. His father staggered to his feet. “That sword… do you know what you’ve done?”
Kael’s grip tightened. “It saved me. It saved us.”
The king’s face was stricken with something worse than fear—grief. “That sword destroyed kingdoms long before ours. It will destroy you too.”
Before Kael could answer, the black warrior rose from the rubble, laughing softly. “Yes, boy. Listen to your king. You are not his heir. You are ours.”
The shadows writhed behind him, and more figures stepped through—dozens of shadow-warriors. Kael and his father were surrounded.
The king looked to Kael, his voice steady despite the chaos. “Run. Take Lira. Leave the blade.”
“I can’t,” Kael whispered. His hand was already bleeding again. The blade had bound him.
The warrior raised his spear. “Then die with him.”
The shadow army charged. Kael screamed, shadows bursting from him in a tidal wave. The throne room was swallowed in black.
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Chapter 202 – Ashes Remembered (Finale)
The battle beneath the broken sky had ended in silence. Silence so vast it seemed the world itself had forgotten how to breathe. Yet silence, like ash, never lasts forever. Wind comes, memory stirs, and stories take root in the bones of a kingdom.Years LaterThe war was gone, but its shadow had never truly lifted. Decades rolled by, and in that time the people who had lived through the night of oaths grew old, bent, and gray. Their children, and their children’s children, asked what it was like to see the sky torn open, to hear fire clash with eternal dark. Few could give answers without tears.The kingdoms rebuilt, stone upon stone, village upon village. Cities that once burned with Rider flame now gleamed with new banners not of kings or warlords, but of unity. In the heart of the capital, no throne was raised. Instead, a monument stood: a jagged shard of blackened stone, scorched at its core, the very rock where Kael’s sword had struck the Rider’s essence.On its face, carved deep
Chapter 201 – Ashes Eternal
Silence.Not peace, not rest silence like the pause between heartbeats, waiting to see if the next will come.Kael stood amidst the wreckage. His sword was gone, shattered when the Rider fell. His armor hung in tatters, his blood soaking the earth. He felt… hollow.He staggered forward, calling names. “Roran… Nira… Isolde…”The banner was gone. Roran lay still beside where it once stood, his hand clenched tight around its last fragment. His lips curved in a faint smile, as though even in death, he had fulfilled his vow.Kael’s chest ached. He placed his forehead to Roran’s hand. “You were the banner, old friend. We all just followed.”But the ashes swallowed the words.Isolde stood apart, flame still flickering around her. It no longer roared it wept, hissing softly. She stared into her hands, her expression unreadable.“Kael.” Her voice cracked, rough as broken glass. “It was never my fire. I see it now. The Rider’s flame, bound to me all along. I was his weapon… and I still am.”Kae
Chapter 200 – Beneath the Broken Sky
The battlefield trembled, not with the march of armies, but with the weight of promises long broken.The Shadow Rider’s form towered in the distance, not flesh, not bone, but a swirling mass of blackened flame and fractured oaths. Thousands of voices poured from him vows never kept, betrayals never forgiven, whispers of men and women who had promised and failed.Kael felt the air tighten in his lungs. Every word spoken by the Rider pressed into his chest like chains.“Do you know what I am?” the Rider’s voice roared, echoing across the torn plain. “I am the promise your kings broke when they betrayed their people. I am the oath of friendship crushed beneath blades. I am the vow of love, abandoned in the night. Every word spoken, every bond shattered, every lie sealed me into being.”Nira’s blade shook in her hand. “Then we face not one enemy… but the weight of all history.”The Rider laughed. It was not mirth. It was a scream of millions.“And who are you to stand against eternity’s d
Chapter 199 – The Last Oath
The abyss stank of burnt ash and blood. Isolde’s body lay limp in Kael’s arms, her chest barely rising. Nira stood before them, sword drawn, her gaze locked on the Shadow Rider as his cracked helm bled smoke.The oathbound survivors gathered ragged, bloodied, faces pale but unbroken. Dozens where there had once been hundreds. Yet their eyes burned with the same fire: the Oath of Ashes.The Rider spread his arms, shadows billowing like wings.“See how your vows betray you. You bind yourselves to death, and I am death. You are already mine.”Nira raised her voice, steady though her throat ached. No… you’re wrong.Nira raised her voice, steady though her throat ached. “No… you’re wrong.”Roran coughed blood, forcing himself upright with his shattered banner. “Speak it, Nira. Remind us.”She stepped forward, sword raised high, and shouted, each word a strike:“The Oath was never about survival. It was never about victory. It was about defiance.”The survivors echoed, their voices ragged b
Chapter 198 – Fire Against Shadow
The light from Kael’s sacrifice lingered only a heartbeat before it was swallowed again. The abyss cracked, splintering into jagged shards of reality, and in the center stood the Shadow Rider wounded, yes, but not destroyed.Isolde rose from the ruin, her palms ablaze, fury in her eyes. “You’ll not take another from me.”The Rider’s helm tilted toward her. Smoke curled from the wound Kael had dealt him, but his voice was steady, dark as ever.“I already have. I always have.”The ground shifted, forming a ring of shadowed flame around them. Nira shouted, “Isolde, don’t he’s drawing you in!”But Isolde stepped forward, fire searing hotter, her eyes fixed on the Rider. “I was forged for this. If I burn, I burn.”Their clash began like a star collapsing.Isolde’s fire raged living flame that roared and danced with a will of its own, lashing at the Rider. Every strike was a storm, every breath a furnace. The Rider countered with void, a darkness that devoured heat, smothering fire with sil
Chapter 197 – The Abyss Stirs
The march of the living and the dead thundered like a storm. The echoes of oathbound past walked beside Kael and the others, their phantom weapons shimmering faintly against the darkness.But the Shadow Rider was no longer waiting.The air itself buckled. The ground beneath their feet softened into ash. The sky cracked apart like brittle glass.Isolde shouted, “Hold together!” Her flames rose high, a beacon against the encroaching black.Yet the light bent and twisted.Shadows reached up like talons, clutching at their ankles. The world tipped sideways. A howl like a thousand broken promises filled the void.And then the battlefield shattered.The Oathbound were dragged into another realm entirely an endless abyss of black mist and fractured light.Kael staggered to his knees. His sword clattered to the ground, its steel glowing faintly as if resisting the darkness.Nira planted her spear and hissed, “Where is this?”The Rider’s voice rolled over them, heavy and cruel.“Welcome home,
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