🜂 The Warden Stirs
The Iron Citadel rose from a cliffside like a blade driven into the earth. Cold, angular, and alive with machinery older than the Riftfall Wars, it had once housed the Warden High Command.
Now, only one remained.
Warden Prime Caelus Vire stood before a sealed chamber lined with inert war-constructs and dormant mechs, their eyes dim. Yet the room thrummed with deep, pulsing heat.
He opened his palm.
A shard of raw dragonbone floated above it—charred, still humming with old fire.
> "Emberseed has chosen rebirth," he murmured. "Let us remind them of why we chose containment."
He pressed the shard into the central console.
Across the chamber, the label lit up:
> PROJECT IRONSEED: COUNTER-RECLAMATION PROTOCOL ACTIVE
---
🜂 Valecrown Under Flame
Jackie woke to sirens.
Mira burst into the chamber. "They're here."
"How?" Jackie snapped, already strapping on her scale-hardened jacket.
"Warden tech. Cloaked entries. Drones. Constructs. Not soldiers."
Kael entered next. "We've got ten, maybe fifteen minutes before they breach the inner ring."
Jackie clenched her fists. "Then we stand."
Luci grabbed her bow. "Ash to ash."
> For the first time in a generation, Valecrown would burn by choice.
They rushed to the battlements.
What they saw chilled them.
Descending from the ash-storms above were iron-winged constructs, shaped like dragons but hollow, soulless. Claws like siege talons. Eyes like searchlights.
Behind them: a floating monolith of black steel—the Warden Dreadcarrier Oblivion's Halo.
> Ironseed had come.
---
🜂 The Fireheir Rises
The battle was chaos.
Emberbound flung burning spears from the towers, old flame glyphs glowing underfoot. Civilians were ushered to underground shelters, while dragon-kin—smaller, newly awakened from Emberseed—took to the skies in clumsy, courageous bursts.
Jackie moved like a storm.
Every time she struck, flames answered. Her blade had been reforged in the Pyrewell, now lined with emberglass and encoded with dragonblood. It sang with every swing.
One of the Ironseed constructs slammed into her path.
She planted her feet.
> "You're not dragons," she growled. "You're shadows wearing steel."
The creature lunged.
She met it with a column of pure fire.
> And it melted.
But high above, Caelus Vire watched from the bridge of Oblivion's Halo, his smile thin.
"She burns brighter than I expected."
He tapped a command glyph.
> "Send it."
---
🜂 Ashborn vs. Ironborn
A deep howl echoed from the dreadcarrier's lower decks.
The clouds split.
Descending through lightning and fire came a massive form—twenty feet tall, armored in black Warden alloy, wings spread like a crucifix of war.
It bore no face.
Only flame behind glass.
And it spoke in a voice crafted from every scream the Wardens had silenced:
> "JAZIRA'S HEIR.
SUBMIT TO EXTINCTION."
Jackie stared up at it, heart pounding.
Kael beside her. Luci, notching an ember-tipped arrow. Mira, hands glowing with stormfire.
"I don't submit," Jackie said.
> "I ignite."
She leapt.
And the sky tore open as ash met steel.
---
🜂 The First Rupture
Their battle cracked the sky.
Fire burned through circuitry.
Steel cut through bone.
And somewhere between flame and forge, something new was born. As Jackie fought the Ironseed behemoth, her embercore flared—too bright, too deep. She wasn't just channeling power anymore.
She was becoming it.
Flame spiraled around her body like wings.
The old legends hadn't lied.
> The Fireheir was real.
And with a final strike, she drove her blade through the construct's chest, into its molten heart.
> It shattered like glass.
The rest of the Ironseed army paused.
They felt it.
A silence fell over Valecrown.
Then the sky pulsed.
> A second dreadcarrier entered orbit.