WORLDBREAKER: Rise of the Reborn Flame

The shattered path.

The forest between Skyreach and the Maw was known only as the Gray Veil.

Legends whispered that its trees were older than the kingdoms, older than the gods, older than death itself. Each step Adam took down the moss-covered path felt like walking through the bones of something ancient and slumbering.

No birds sang here. No wind stirred the branches. Just total silence and eyes.

Always, the feeling of being watched.

“Keep your blade loose,” Nyra whispered. “The Gray Veil doesn’t forgive mistakes.”

Adam nodded. His fingers hovered near his sword. A faint, ghostly light pulsed in the depths of the woods. Essence drifted from cracks in the bark of dead trees. Spirits, perhaps. Or remnants of old battles.

He stepped over a fallen root, and the air shifted.

Then he heard the whispers again.

But these were different from the ones in the ravine. These were clear. Familiar.

"Adam..."

He froze.

That voice wasn’t Nyra’s nor was it anyone in this world.

It was his mother’s.

"Adam, why did you leave me…?"

He spun around.

There was nothing there but the fog.

“Don’t listen to it!” Nyra hissed, grabbing his shoulder.

“I heard…” he started.

“I know. Everyone hears someone. That’s how the Veil feeds. It turns your memories against you.” Nyra said.

He stared into the mist, heart pounding. “Then let’s get out of here.”

They made camp beneath the hollow of a massive tree, one whose trunk had been carved with symbols from a long-dead language. Nyra worked on a fire using an enchanted flint, while Adam sat on a fallen log, staring at the blade in his lap.

It glowed faintly in the dark. The Essence within it pulsed, stronger than before. As if it, too, had something to say.

“You’re changing,” Nyra said, not looking up.

He blinked. “What?”

“Since the cave. Since the troll. You fight differently now.”

He thought about that. She was right.

It wasn’t just reflexes. It was instinct. His body remembered things he never learned. He had struck down that mimic without hesitation, perfect technique and effortless precision was used.

“I see things before they happen,” he said. “When the troll lifted its club, I knew where it would land. Before it moved.”

Nyra glanced at him. “That’s not Essence. That’s something else.”

“Foresight?”

“No. Something older. Deeper. Like your soul’s remembering another life.”

Adam swallowed. “You think I’ve lived before?”

Nyra shrugged. “In this world, anything’s possible. Some believe the stars shape who we are. Others say the dead return in different skins. You? You’re too strange to be ordinary.”

He looked back at the blade. The light within it swirled like a storm.

Strange, he thought. Or cursed.

They reached the Maw two days later.

It was bigger than Adam remembered. A chasm that split the land like a wound. Smoke rose from its depths. The sky above it shimmered with unnatural colors green, violet, red.

At the edge stood a figure. Cloaked, hooded and unmoving.

Nyra slowed down. “Not one of ours.”

Adam rested a hand on his blade. “Shattered Sect?”

“Only one way to find out.”

They approached.

The figure turned slowly. A pale mask stared back at them, smooth and featureless except for a single black line down the center.

It raised one hand.

A ripple of dark Essence rolled out like a shockwave.

Adam was thrown back.

Nyra rolled into a crouch and lunged with her spear.

The figure caught it mid-thrust.

Then it spoke, not with a voice, but into their minds.

“You are not yet ready.”

Adam surged to his feet, blade drawn.

The figure flicked its wrist causing the ground to shatter.

Adam barely dodged as obsidian spikes erupted where he’d stood.

“Who are you?!” he shouted.

The figure tilted its head. A soft hum echoed in their minds.

Then it vanished. No sound made nor was there a flash. It just disappeared.

Nyra cursed. “I hate when they do that.”

Adam looked down at where the figure had stood, a black flower now grew its petals shaped like blades.

That night, Adam dreamt again.

But this time, it wasn’t of the past.

It was the future.

He stood atop a mountain of bones. His sword burned like a star. All around him, kingdoms burned. Skies cracked. A voice, a terrible and beautiful one echoed through the heavens.

"Will you kneel, Adam Smith?"

He looked up.

Above him, a throne of chains hovered in the void. Upon it sat a being of light and shadow, its face ever-changing, its hands outstretched.

He raised his blade and answered, “No.”

The figure smiled.

And the world shattered.

He woke up gasping only to see Nyra knelt beside him. “Another one?”

He nodded. Sweat poured down his face.

She handed him water.

“I saw something. A throne. A god, maybe.”

She was silent for a minute or two.

“I think… I think it wants me to kneel. To serve it.”

“Then you don’t,” she said simply.

He looked at her. “What if I’m meant to?”

Nyra leaned close. “I don’t care what the stars say. Fate only matters if you follow it. Choose your own path. That’s what makes us human.”

Her words steadied him more than any spell.

As dawn rose, they climbed down into the Maw.

The air grew colder. The stone beneath their feet shimmered with dark runes, faint echoes of wars lost to time.

At the center of the pit, they found the relic.

Not an object but a person. A girl to be precise.

Trapped inside a crystal of blood-red Essence.

She floated above a black altar carved with dragon bones. Her eyes were closed. But her heartbeat echoed through the ground.

Thump. Thump.

Adam stepped closer and the crystal pulsed.

The girl opened her eyes and whispered one word.

“Help.”

The mountain began to shake.

And something huge stirred beneath them.