The wind howled across the Dagger Plains, but it wasn't the kind born of weather or wing.
It was older.
It carried voices from a time when the world still remembered how to speak to the stars.
Kael stood at the edge of the crumbling bridge into Runemar, the ancient capital of the Runebinders—a people as old as the First Flame. Beside him, Elira tightened her reins. Behind them, their riders waited in tense silence.
The bridge ahead was more than broken—it had been twisted. The stone arches were warped like ribs, as if the city had once drawn breath and then collapsed inward. Runes long buried now glowed faintly, like candlelight on old parchment, pulsing with quiet defiance.
"This place gives me the creeps," murmured Brann, the storm-eyed scout.
"It should," Elira said. "This city fell during the Night of Sundering. No one's entered since."
Kael stared ahead.
They would be the first.
The City of Whispers
Crossing into Runemar felt like stepping into memory.
Time did not pass the same way here. Their shadows bent strangely. The sun dimmed. Even the wind died the moment they crossed the first threshold.
The streets were paved in obsidian-veined stone, etched with runic lines that pulsed beneath their feet. Buildings loomed on either side—tall, spired, and utterly silent. No birds. No bodies. Just the faint, ever-present sound of whispers that could not be placed.
Elira traced her fingers across a wall.
"The runes are still alive."
Kael nodded. "That means someone kept the Forge-Heart burning."
They found it near the city center.
A great dome, long cracked by time, and yet still radiating the steady thrum of power. In its center burned a flame suspended above an anvil—not by magic, but by memory.
Kael stepped forward.
As he did, the runes across the dome walls flared.
And then… the last Runebinder stepped into view.
The Keeper of Iron Memory
She looked old—but not aged.
Her skin was the color of cooled bronze, and her eyes were twin embers. Tattoos spiraled down her arms and neck, each pulsing softly. Her voice, when she spoke, was low and measured.
"You carry a dead blade," she said to Kael.
"I carry a changed one."
She tilted her head. "Even broken runes burn if struck with purpose."
He stepped forward and unfastened his sword, placing it upon the Forge-Heart.
"I need your help."
"Everyone does, when the world begins to shake," she replied. "But few ask it with humility."
Kael remained silent.
She circled the sword slowly, studying it not just with her eyes, but with something deeper—her memory.
"The soulflame speaks through it," she finally said. "But it is too loud. You will burn from the inside unless we temper it."
Kael blinked. "Temper the soulflame?"
The Runebinder nodded. "Not all fire is meant for war. Some is for forging. Let me show you."
The Trial of Stone and Flame
The process was not a ritual—it was a reckoning.
Kael was stripped of weapon and cloak and led deep beneath the Forge-Heart. There, beneath the city's bones, lay the true heart of Runemar: a chamber where the oldest runes still lived, guarded by a single, eternal flame.
"Lie here," she instructed.
Kael obeyed. He lay on a slab of rune-stone, surrounded by a ring of carved names—every Runebinder who ever lived. The flame above him shimmered, and then… dropped into his chest.
He didn't scream. He couldn't.
Images surged through his mind—his mother's face, his brother's laughter, the Crown's agony, the Deadbound's assault, the shattering of the soulbrand, the look in Theren's eyes before he faded.
And deeper still…
Visions of a silver-eyed woman walking through fire. Her voice cutting through the veil:
"Let it break. Let them burn. Let him rise, so that I may fall him again."
Kael gritted his teeth.
He stood—inside his vision now—and faced her.
"You fear me."
"No," she said, with a smile. "I created you."
And then the flame burst from his chest—and left him changed.
When Kael rose from the stone, the rune circle had burned a pattern into his skin: twelve marks across his chest, each glowing faintly.
The Runebinder bowed her head. "You are tempered."
Elira's Discovery
While Kael underwent the trial, Elira wandered deeper into the city's Archive Spire, chasing a flicker of movement she couldn't explain.
There, beneath crumbling scrolls and shattered crystals, she found a sealed vault marked only by one phrase:
The World Before the Flame.
She reached toward the handle—and the vault opened at her touch.
Inside were twelve glass cylinders, each containing a single floating rune made of pure light.
They pulsed.
As she approached, they began to whisper—her name.
"Elira…"
"Elira…"
She froze.
A glowing sigil embedded itself in her palm.
And a voice entered her mind:
You are one of the Twelve. The Balance Keeper. When the Hollow awakens, so must you.
She staggered back—but the cylinders went still.
Nothing more came.
But the mark remained.
An Oath in the Light
Kael rejoined the group an hour later, the soulflame now pulsing with him, not against him.
Elira looked shaken.
"I found something," she began.
"So did I."
They shared what had happened—the flame, the mark, the vision of the woman, the vault and the whispered name.
The Runebinder listened to it all.
"Then the Herald is not just awakening," she said, "she is choosing her opposites."
Kael frowned. "Opposites?"
"Balance must exist. For every Hollow Flame, a soulflame. For every Devourer, a Keeper. If she is the Destroyer, then one among you must rise as the Preserver."
They stood in silence a moment.
Kael turned to Elira.
"We can't face this alone."
Elira nodded. "We never were alone. We just forgot the others."
The Enemy Moves
Back in Sorathal, the silver-eyed Herald stood atop the Tower of Bone.
"The runes have awakened," said one of her Hollow Knights.
"Good," she replied. "That means the boy is no longer resisting his flame."
A Hollow Mage stepped forward. "Shall we strike?"
"No," she said. "Let him gather his 'allies.' Let him remember what hope tastes like."
She held out her hand—and a new blade formed from the Void, wrapped in tongues of silver fire.
"Then I will take it from him again."
A Map Written in Flame
That night, as the company camped beneath the stars outside the gates of Runemar, Kael sat by the fire tracing his hand over a new map—one marked not with roads or rivers, but with burning points of power.
Elira sat beside him, her mark glowing faintly.
"There are more of us," she said.
Kael nodded. "Twelve. Twelve runes. Twelve roles. Twelve against the Hollow Flame."
Elira looked at the stars.
"Do you think we can win?"
Kael didn't answer at first. Then:
"No. Not yet."
"But?"
He drew his blade and let it catch the firelight.
"But we can fight."