Ten years later.
The world had changed.
The Flame Era was over. The High Temple had fractured into petty sects. The rebel warlords had disappeared into ash. And in the center of the silent world stood a single monument:
KAEL OF NO CROWN
HE CARRIED THE FIRE
AND LET IT DIE
The monument stood in the middle of the Greyfield Crater, where the Codex had been burned. The land still whispered when the wind blew. Not words — but warmth. Like the world remembered him, even if history had tried to move on.
No one came here anymore.
Except for one girl.
She was seventeen, with dark eyes, soot-streaked hands, and a pendant that pulsed faintly with dormant emberlight.
Her name was Lira.
She stood at the foot of the monument, alone, clutching a leather satchel tight to her chest.
Within it: a page.
Not from the Codex — but from something older.
Words that had appeared in flame one night in her dreams:
"Flame does not end. It sleeps."
"And in sleep, it listens."
"You carry what he left behind."
Lira reached into her satchel.
Pulled out a shard.
Not of Kael's fire. Not of Valior's memory.
But something… different.
It was cold. And yet, alive.
She whispered to it.
"Is it you? Or something else?"
The shard pulsed once.
And the air around the monument grew still.
Then — from deep beneath the earth — a second pulse answered.
Not fire. Not memory. But hunger.
Far to the east, in the ruined vaults of the Temple, something awoke.
A sealed chamber cracked open — not from age, but from permission.
Inside, a voice whispered:
"The king died. The fire died."
"But I never served the king."
"I served the flame before kings learned to speak."
The shadows stirred.
And a name long forgotten returned to the world:
ASHMOURN.
The First Flame's opposite.
Not destruction. Not light.
But consumption.
Back at the crater, Lira stood tall.
The pendant around her neck glowed — not red, but silver-white.
She did not understand what it meant.
Not yet.
But she had read the flame-script.
She had heard the voice in her sleep.
She had seen Kael in her dreams — not as a king, not as a god…
But as a man standing at a gate of ash, saying:
"You will have to choose, too."
And so it began again.
Not a war of fire.
But a war of remnants.
Of what should have died, but didn't.
Of the echoes left behind when even memory is burned away.
🔥 Arc II: The Rise of Ashmourn Begins… 🔥