---
The moment their souls fused, Skira saw with double vision.
Ember's memories—raw, molten, tender—bled into hers like heat through snow. His fears. His courage. The way he still saw Ashbane not just as a monster, but as a broken mirror.
And within her own flame, something crystallized.
This war was not just about survival. It was about clarity.
> "Twinflare Synchrony active," came the internal system ping. "Vanguard authorization granted. Combat deployment confirmed."
She and Ember stood at the forward ledge of Skyshard Peak, their new form splitting and merging like mirrored flame.
Below, the Blight advanced on the Verdant Scar—a once-thriving valley where the Memory Trees bloomed.
If the Blight consumed them, entire centuries would be lost.
> "We strike first," Skira said, wings unfurling. "We burn a path so the others remember how to fight."
Ember nodded beside her. And together, they launched.
---
The Battle for Verdant Scar
The Blightspawn were already feeding.
Misshapen wyrmlings clawed at bark that screamed in ancestral tongues. A spectral wyrm—twice the size of a mountain drake—hovered in the air like a cloud of grief. It was known as Mournscale, one of Ashbane's generals.
Skira's flame recoiled.
But Twinflare did not.
The fire they unleashed as they dove toward the valley base was not normal flame. It was anchored. Memory-bound. Laced with timeline locks and encoded heat.
> [Ability: Ancestral Lock Triggered]
Target: Mournscale
Effect: Memory Anchor Disruption (67%)
Bonus: Resistance to Blight Aura (Stacking: 3x)
Mournscale screeched as the flames burned through its essence—stripping away stolen echoes, reducing it to a juvenile shell gasping with forgotten instinct.
Skira landed hard, her talons digging into the scorched earth, while Ember circled high to form a burning perimeter.
> "The roots are still holding!" she called out. "We can save the heart-tree!"
But something stirred beneath the soil.
The Blight had burrowed in.
---
Phase Two: Blight Emergence
The ground ruptured.
Three Blight constructs rose—twisted amalgamations of half-dragons, reassembled from scavenged flame. Their eyes glowed with Ashbane's eerie pale light.
> [System Warning: Null-Pattern Detected]
Blightbreed: Hollow Drakes (x3)
Immunity: Direct Flame Damage (Tier-3 and below)
Counter Required: Memory-Engraved Flame or Pact-tier soulfire
Skira closed her eyes. Flame bloomed across her body—not in rage, but in resonance.
She focused on a single memory:
Her first spark. The tiny puff of fire she made as a hatchling under Ember's watchful eye. The moment she first believed.
She fed it to her fire.
And it changed.
Her next breath wasn't fire. It was testament.
> [Twinflare Technique: Remembrance Pulse]
Result: Blightbreed Conversion Rate: 2/3
Remaining Target: Alpha Hollow Drake (Corrupted Soul Residue Detected)
Two of the creatures collapsed, reverting to harmless slag.
But the third one lunged.
It knew her. Its soul was partially hers.
> "Skira..."
It spoke.
Ember struck like a meteor from above, crushing it mid-lunge.
He stared at the remains.
> "Ashbane is learning. He's using memories against us now."
Skira felt her flame flicker. For a moment, she was a child again, hiding from the thunder. But Ember's wing pressed against hers.
> "We burn not to destroy. We burn to remember."
---
The Vanguard arrived minutes later.
Seraxa in a cyclone of edge-wind. Thornmaw rolling like a living avalanche. Nyx slithered through shadow and Kaelrix pulsed in radiant glitchlight. Velra brought the warmth of healing—mending the roots and reviving the land's memory.
> "Ember!" Velra called. "You and Skira anchored the timeline. The Scar remembers itself now."
> "Then let it teach the rest of the world," Ember said, his voice still lit with pactfire.
They had won a battle.
But as he looked east, toward the Mawforge Horizon...
He knew the real war had not yet begun.
The Forgewinds howled as Ember ascended the pinnacle of Skyshard Peak.
Every flap of his wings resonated with layered heat—forge-bred, soul-bound, and now… touched by memory itself. Below him, the Vanguard forces trained in relentless circuits: younglings mastering ember loops, war-drakes sharpening their fireforms, and soulbinders drawing constellation sigils in drifting ash.
But here, above them all, Ember was alone.
He had to be.
Ashbane's resonance had nearly pierced him during the last scrylock. A breach of that intensity wasn't just a tactical threat—it was spiritual erosion.
> "His flame is wrong," Ember whispered to the wind.
"But it still remembers mine. That's how it found me."
He touched his chest. The sigil there had begun to fracture—not from lack of power, but conflict of inheritance.
> [Warning: Ancestral Flame Divergence]
Source: Twinblood Linkage Detected
Matching DNA Thread: 98.7%
Counterforce: Ashbane
Evolutionary Entanglement: ACTIVE
Ember growled, wings flaring wide.
> "If we share the same fire… I'll reclaim it."
A rumble answered from below. Not thunder.
Someone was coming.
---
A figure approached from the summit pass, horned and cloaked in embersteel—a thin veil of metal layered with protective glyphs.
It was Valir, the Soulforger.
Once a Sovereign smith of the Ashen Enclave, now the last living carrier of the Soulforge Rite—the ritual that could bind evolution to purpose, not power.
He bowed, the heat of his breath visible even in the storming air.
> "You summoned the pact circle, Ember. Do you truly intend to forge your soul into the line of fire?"
Ember nodded.
> "Ashbane's power feeds on what dragons forget. I intend to remember more than he can consume."
Valir's expression darkened.
> "Then you'll need more than raw soul. You'll need a pact partner. A second flame."
---
Ember turned toward the descending stair. A young dragon waited there, smaller in size, but her eyes gleamed with brilliant twin-rings of cobalt and ember.
Skira.
Once a hatchling he saved. Now a full-blooded Vanguard wing-commander. Her soulflame burned with fierce defiance.
> "You called me," she said. "I answer."
Ember hesitated. "You know what this could do to you."
She stepped forward.
> "If we're to stop a being that unwrites dragons, then I'm willing to be written beside you."
Valir drew his blade.
A ceremonial obsidian shard, wreathed in memory-runes.
> "Then let the Soulforge open."
---
They stood on opposite glyphs, the forgewheel between them. Valir's blade cut the air, and flame responded—not just fire, but history itself. Threads of past roared from the winds—whispers of fallen Sovereigns, the chants of lost tribes, the laughter of unhatched hatchlings long gone.
Ember's flames met Skira's in the center.
> [Soulforge Ritual Initiated]
Fusion Mode: Dual Flame Weave
Consent Detected: Both Parties
Triggering: PACT EVOLUTION
WARNING: Irreversible Soul Link Engaged
The world twisted.
Not into darkness. Into flame so bright it bent time.
---
He saw Ashbane.
Not as he was now, but as he had been.
Kyranox, laughing beneath stormclouds. Playing in volcanic pools. Training beside Ember as children.
And then… silence.
A silence born not of death, but decision.
> "He walked into the Blight willingly," Ember realized aloud.
"Not to conquer. But to forget what he'd failed to become."
Skira's flame burned beside his.
> "Then we'll remind him."
Their bodies glowed, melding flames briefly into a double spiral sigil—
> [EVOLUTION UNLOCKED: Twinflare Aspect]
Type: Memorybound Sovereign
Class: Pact Ascendant
New Ability: Ancestral Lock
Effect: Flame attacks gain memory resonance; can disrupt Blight constructs by invoking origin-paths
Ember gasped.
For the first time since Ashbane's corruption…
He felt hope that wasn't borrowed.
---
Down below, the Blight marched.
The land withered where Ashbane passed. His legion now included spectral husks—drakes turned to thoughtless shapes, creatures of fading echo.
But high above, on Skyshard Peak, two dragons ignited a flame that remembered everything.
Their wings touched. Their souls aligned.
And the air rang with the sound of a war renewed.
> "Let's go," Ember said. "Before the world forgets why it still exists."
Skira nodded.
> "Then let's remind it—with fire."