They stood, shuddering and alive, in the blue-lit hush of the arena, the echoes of their victory still trembling in their bones. Ash drifted like confetti, fire receded, monks bowed, one last benediction for the living.
The head monk approached, face shadowed but voice clear as the wind in winter.
"We have guarded this secret for centuries," he intoned, eyes searching each of them in turn. "None have dared all peaks, none have passed the trials. You are worthy, and whatever waits below knows you. Remember: it will know your hearts before you know its name."
He stepped back. A gong sounded, low and final. The ropes thrummed, the platform shivered, and the valley itself seemed to draw breath.
They crossed the bridge in a single file, boots whispering over old wood and ancient alloy. Each step was a shedding of fear, pride, and doubt, left behind with the heights.
And then the platform. Alive, impossible.
Dellos touched it, and the metal softened, greeting his palm with a warmth that felt like memory. Asyana and Reyland stepped after, hearts pounding not with fear, but with a trembling anticipation that verged on reverence. They exchanged glances, not quite smiles; there was no language for this.
The ropes released, one by one, and the world dropped away.
The platform began its slow, silent descent into the valley's heart. The wind fell still. For the first time, the air felt neither thin nor poisoned but pure, almost sweet, alive with scents they couldn't name. It was as if the mountain itself had been holding its breath for centuries, only now exhaling the secret of its heart. Stone walls loomed on all sides, black as night, streaked with veins of blue and silver, pulsing with a quiet, internal light. The higher they dropped, the more those veins began to twist and writhe, knotting into sigils, glyphs, shifting tapestries of memory in motion.
Reyland, usually the steadiest, felt his hand reach for the rope rail, eyes wide as a child's.
"Look," he whispered, voice cracking. "It's changing."
Indeed, the rock itself seemed to ripple, solid stone melting into something else—a metal that was not metal, shimmering like moonlight in water. Asyana pressed her hand to the platform's edge and felt it soft, not cold, not quite warm, pulsing in time with her heart.
"It's alive," she breathed. "The whole valley is alive."
Dellos felt the shard in his coat thrum, resonant, eager. As they drifted lower, the air thickened, not heavy, but dense with possibility, like the charged stillness before a storm.
Colors bloomed across the walls: bronze, indigo, and gold, all chasing each other in silent, shifting patterns. Occasionally, a face, an outstretched hand, the wing of a Render, the curve of a mountain, flickered in and out of sight, images that were not quite there, memories etched in living metal. At the midpoint, the platform paused, suspended in a shaft of light so pure it seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. Mist parted below, revealing a floor far beneath, but there was no bottom, only more of that breathing, living alloy, the whole valley transformed.
Dellos' breath hitched.
"This was never stone," he said, wonder and terror in equal measure. "We've been living on the skin of something... someone... ancient."
The descent resumed. With every meter, the silence grew, but it was not empty; it was a hush full of watching, and listening. Asyana's bravado faded to awe, her hands trembling, but she didn't hide it. Reyland wept silently, tears gleaming on his cheeks, overcome by a beauty so alien it wounded him. The air grew warmer, thick with a strange energy that left their skin prickling, their scars humming, and their hearts thundering in their chests. At the valley's nadir, the platform slowed, coming to rest in the center of a great open chamber, a bowl of living metal, its walls alive with story and waiting.
They stepped off together, boots echoing softly. All around, the chamber shimmered, the walls flexing, images blooming and fading, each one a fragment of a forgotten world.
Dellos reached for the shard, and the air itself seemed to bend, pulling him toward the center. Asyana and Reyland followed, their awe now tempered by something like dread. The journey through the peaks had tested their strength. The valley would test their souls.
And above, in the heights, the monks knelt as one, whispering prayers for the living and the lost.
"What you seek is waiting. It knows your heart. Welcome, children of the flame."
At the center of the chamber, where the currents of living metal pooled in intricate spirals, something began to take shape. It was not there—and then it was—as if the very air folded inside-out, pulling matter from another place, another time, another possibility. For a heartbeat, the world seemed to stutter. The silence pulsed. Shadows bent.
And then it stood before them: the Kite.
Only, it was not a kite, at least not as their childhood dreams or old tales would have it. This was an artifact of paradox, a shard of living memory and machine, a form that hovered and flickered, never holding a single shape for long. Wings unfurled from its sides, too many and too few, some feathered, some veined with cold alloy, some shivering with an alien iridescence. Each wing bore eyes, hundreds, thousands, opening, closing, watching, weeping silent blue light. The body was a lattice of spinning rings, some spinning backward through themselves, some dissolving into fractals and then reforming as if the laws of nature bent in service to its secret. Where the string should have been, there was only a trail of shimmering glyphs, burning and vanishing before the mind could grasp their meaning. It glitched as if reality itself could not fully host it. Sometimes its image doubled, then fractured, then blurred at the edges until it became a memory of itself, fading from the world, only to snap back with a flutter of silent, impossible wings.
Asyana took a step back, mouth open in terror and wonder. Reyland's knees buckled; he gripped Dellos' arm, eyes wide, barely daring to blink.
Dellos could barely breathe. The shard in his pocket vibrated so hard he thought it might fly out and join its twin. He reached for it—compelled, not by reason, but by the sense that this was always the end of the path, the reason for every trial and every pain.
The Kite turned, its eyes focusing on him, its wings folding and unfolding, a thousand secrets rustling like a storm of memory. Its voice, or the ghost of a voice, shivered through the chamber, not in sound, but inside their bones.
"You have come far, but to awaken the heart, you must bring all the scattered fires. Only then will the world remember what it was. Only then can you become more than the children of loss."
The words made no sense, yet every one of them understood, each in their own way. Dellos took a step forward, the shard humming with recognition, and the Kite drifted closer, awaiting the moment of union, the next key in a lock as old as the mountain itself.
And all around them, the chamber came alive, the walls warping and rippling, a living tapestry of visions, past, future, and some other direction altogether, demanding to be seen.
The shard leaped from Dellos' palm as if caught by invisible hands. For a heartbeat it hovered between worlds, spinning slowly, casting ripples of light and shadow across the chamber's molten walls. The air vibrated, a low, aching note that set every nerve alight.
Then, as if the universe itself was holding its breath, the shard floated toward the Kite—the impossible entity, the heart of memory and machine. The Kite extended its many wings, a fan of living light and alloy, each feather trembling with anticipation. The air shimmered. The eyes upon its wings blinked in unison, some with hope, some with fear, some with that old, unyielding hunger for what's next.
When the shard touched the Kite, it did not merely connect; it melded as if the two had always been one, separated only by sorrow and time. The shard liquefied, a stream of silver and blue flame, winding into the Kite's body, drawn into the lattice of spinning rings and shivering glyphs.
Then, everything changed.
The Kite, if it could even be called that anymore, began to transform. Its form expanded, blossoming outward in impossible geometry. Wings grew and retracted; eyes merged and multiplied; its heart pulsed with a thousand hues, each one a story, a memory, a prayer sent up to forgotten gods. Where it had once flickered, now it burned steady, radiant, whole. The glitches ceased. The stuttering, the ghostlike vanishing, gone. Instead, the entity became sharply real, present in a way nothing mortal could match. Its light washed over the chamber, and the world seemed to exhale. Shadows retreated. The rippling metal of the chamber walls stilled, reflecting not chaos, but peace. A deep, resonant silence fell, a silence not of emptiness, but of fulfillment, of a question finally answered after an age of longing.
Dellos stood transfixed, tears in his eyes, awe flooding through him. Asyana fell to her knees, whispering a wordless prayer. Reyland pressed a trembling hand to his heart, his gaze locked on the being before them.
For the first time since the trials began, peace settled in their bones—a peace that felt as old as the mountain itself.
The Kite, no, the Rememberancer, spread its wings, casting a gentle warmth over them all, and spoke, not in words, but in a harmony that filled their hearts:
"One fire returns to the source. Four remain, scattered across wound and memory. Bring them home, and the world will be made whole."
At that moment, they understood: that this was only the beginning. And yet, for the first time, hope felt real.
The entity—Kite, Rememberancer, whatever name their trembling tongues might find—shifted its stance. One of its wings, feathered with living light and spectral alloy, detached itself from the swirling body and drifted toward Dellos. As it moved, the wing twisted, folding in upon itself, morphing from wing to armature, then to a gauntlet of silver-blue flame and sleek, alien metal.
It hovered before him, humming with silent purpose, then gripped his arm in a gentle but unbreakable hold. The gauntlet locked around Dellos' wrist with a sound like thunder buried under velvet. In that instant, a voice—not quite a voice, more a pulse, a living echo—filled their minds:
"Follow the sign. Find the fires."
The words were not spoken, but burned behind the eyes, ringing through bone and memory. Asyana flinched, clutching at her head. Reyland staggered, mouth open in silent awe. Dellos stood unmoving, locked to the floor by more than metal.
But Dellos was not done, he was never done. He took a step forward, feeling the gauntlet pulse against his skin. "Why?" he demanded, voice raw, thunderous in the hush. "What is this for? What are these fires? We can't walk blindly into the dark. If you want us to save this world, you have to let us see, let us understand what it is we fight for!"
As if the chamber itself had been waiting for the question, the far wall began to ripple. The metallic surface undulated like water under a new moon, then melted inward, flowing and pooling, reforming itself as a great, seamless screen, half living, half memory, utterly unlike any Asirian craft. The wall shimmered, reality thinning. Light poured into the chamber, flooding the stone with a silver radiance so pure it hurt to look at. Then, through the brilliance, they appeared:
The Sovreg.
They were taller than any living thing Dellos had ever seen—slender, almost boneless, robed in sheets of living light that flickered with shifting colors: blue, violet, gold, green. Their faces were half-seen, half-imagined, features delicate and sharp, eyes enormous, burning with the kind of wisdom that remembers the beginning of worlds. In those eyes: storms, sunsets, the memory of stars falling through water. Every Sovreg moved as if floating, their feet never quite touching the ground, the hem of their robes swirling in an unseen wind.
A crown of woven flame hovered above each brow, pulsing in slow, impossible patterns. They carried no weapons, only scepters of pure crystal, their surfaces alive with flowing glyphs.
For a heartbeat, the Sovreg stood united—a circle of light, hands joined, energy humming through the chamber. The sense of purpose was overwhelming; even the air vibrated with their unity.
Then, with a sound like a mountain splitting in two, the vision fractured.
The Sovreg's circle wavered. Light turned harsh, the robes flickering with shadow. One Sovreg, eyes blazing violet, stepped back, robes curling away as if burned by an invisible fire. Another, wreathed in blue and gold, reached out, pleading or commanding—it was impossible to say. In that instant, the united crown of a flame split, tearing itself apart in a violent, beautiful spiral.
Two shadows spun away from the light, each Sovreg now mirrored, two halves of the same wound. Their forms twisted and elongated, becoming thinner and darker, their robes flowing in opposite directions. Blue and gold bled away into a void, and where there had been harmony, now there was only tension, unresolved and endless.
They did not speak. They did not weep. They only stared at one another, as if daring the other to blink, as if waiting for the next cataclysm to begin.
The chamber quivered around them as if the living metal itself flinched at the memory it carried. In the reflected blaze of the Sovreg's shattering light, Dellos, Asyana, and Reyland stood transfixed, three figures adrift in an ocean of ancient betrayal.
The two Sovreg shadows spun apart, circling each other like moons caught in an endless orbit. For a heartbeat, they flickered back into unity, then tore apart again, more violently each time, spiraling farther and farther from the source that birthed them.
Where they passed, the living wall wept thin rivulets of molten metal that hissed as they struck the floor, hardening into crystalline shards that pulsed once with ghostly blue fire before going dark.
Reyland stepped forward, voice no louder than a prayer.
"What does it mean?" he whispered. "Are they... us?"
No answer came, only the vision unraveling, fragment by fragment. The Sovreg, once crowned in living flame, dissolved into scatterings of light that bled into the chamber walls. The crown itself lingered an instant longer, a broken ring, spinning, then splitting into five shards of burning dawnlight.
Five sparks. Five fires. Five wounds waiting to be healed or torn wider still.
And through it all, Dellos felt the gauntlet on his wrist tighten, not painfully, but with the certainty of a chain forged not of iron, but of promise. He exhaled a breath that tasted like old ash and a new flame.
"So be it", he thought. If the world must remember, "let it remember through us."
The vision died. Silence flooded in, vast and waiting. The Kite—the Rememberancer—pulsed once more, folding its impossible wings closer, eyes closed like a choir of stars going dark. But as the echoes of the vision faded, Dellos lingered. The chamber's hush pressed around him like a question that refused to die. He turned, gauntlet glinting, voice rough with the ember of the old promise.
"What about Luka?"
The words rang too loud in the living hush.
"We came for him. All of this, the trials, the peaks, it began because he was lost. I need to find him. Tell me how."
The Rememberancer's wings shivered a ripple of light across a thousand eyes. The entity's voice did not speak in words but in a hush that filled the marrow:
"The boy is where he is destined to be. His fire lights the sky, which you cannot yet touch. His path is written in the breath of the wind.
You, Dellos, you have your ember to bear. Asyana her storm. Reyland, his watch. His sky is not yours to cross. Not yet."
Dellos' jaw clenched. Grief, relief, fury, all braided tight in his chest. But he did not argue. Not now. He only bowed his head, once, not in surrender, but in promise.
In that hush, the gauntlet's voice, or maybe the flame inside Dellos himself, whispered:
"One fire returned. Four remain. Seek them... before the forgetting devours all."
Behind him, Asyana laid her hand on his shoulder; anchor, mischief, blade, all at once. Reyland wiped his eyes and steadied his spear, his silence a vow. Together, they turned from the vision's ruins, back toward the darkness beyond the chamber's edge, the next unknown. Their boots rang out in a world that felt suddenly larger than the sky.
Above, the monks knelt, heads bowed to stone. Below, the valley held its breath.
The hunt for the scattered fires had begun.
* * *
Luka felt it. A sudden, electric pulse in his chest. The blue flame under his skin flared alive, casting cyan glyphs that bloomed along his arms and across his face, each one pulsing with a secret rhythm, humming with power older than any name he'd ever learned.
All around him, the Sky-Renders drew near, their massive bodies coiling in a circle, wings folding in reverence. One by one, the great beasts bowed their crowned heads, the gesture solemn, almost ritual. In that silence, Luka understood: they were not just showing respect, they were recognizing him, the new bearer of the flame, the first king in an age of hunger. Dakin stood closest, never breaking his vigil. He circled Luka protectively, his tail curled around the boy's feet, a living shield, a promise etched in scale and muscle. The meaning was clear as the glyphs shining on Luka's skin: "He is one of us now. Our blood, our kin. We will guard him to the end of sky and memory, no matter the cost."
Above, the clouds parted. Light poured down like a benediction, turning the scars and wounds of the flock to silver. Luka's heart thundered, not in fear, but in awe. For the first time, he felt the sky see him, not as a lost child, but as its own.
Luka felt Dellos. Not with his eyes, but deep in the marrow, in the quiet flame that thrummed beneath his skin. It was a presence, familiar as memory, fierce as longing: his father, his anchor, reaching across the silent miles. He knelt, pressing his palm to the earth. The world held its breath. The glyphs on his arms glowed brighter, humming with a language he barely knew but had always carried within him. Luka closed his eyes, surrendering to the current and letting the flame guide him home. And then, he saw: the Kite, radiant and alive, wings flickering through realms of metal and memory; Dellos, proud and wounded, Reyland and Asyana by his side, all of them crossing the valley, fading into the light at the world's edge. Luka watched them go, saw the sorrow and the hope braided in his father's heart, and felt it echo in his own.
He rose slowly, the blue fire rippling along his skin, the glyphs shimmering in the hush. The Sky-Renders watched, silent as gods. Luka stood tall against the broken sky and whispered, the words no louder than a prayer:
"Go, Father. I am well. Do not worry about me. My destiny is here."
The wind caught his words, spiraling them into the vastness, carrying them to where flame meets stone and memory becomes myth.
* * *
A sudden tremor rattled the chamber, pulling Dellos back from the last vestiges of memory. He spun, Severant half-raised, as the far wall of the cave began to ripple. Stone turned to quicksilver, light warping in strange, convulsive patterns until a doorway yawned open, impossibly wide. Cold air spilled through, heavy with scents he couldn't name.
He glanced at Reyland and Asyana, their faces stark with exhaustion and awe. "Time to leave," he said, his voice softer than he intended, more reverent than commanding. One last look at the Kite, still burning, wings folded in silent benediction, and he stepped forward, leading his companions out of the wound in the mountain.
The world beyond stole his breath.
They emerged not onto a path of scree or grass, but onto a vast avenue paved in dark stone blocks cut with impossible precision, each one shimmering faintly as if soaked in starlight. The stone was black, but not dead, rather, it drank the sun and bled it back in hues of violet and indigo, the color of bruised midnight and secrets never spoken. Lining the road on either side, giant statues loomed, twice the height of any man, carved from the same obsidian stone. They were figures, gods, perhaps, but twisted by some alien artistry, their faces long and strange, eyes set too deep, limbs coiled like serpents, crowns of flame and shadow rising from their brows. At first, Dellos thought they resembled the Sovreg from the visions, but these were changed, mutated by sorrow or madness, and their features warped into the grotesque and the sublime.
Each statue held a different artifact: a burning sword, a spiral of glass, a heart cupped in skeletal hands, and a broken wheel. Their postures were neither threatening nor welcoming, only waiting, as if they watched every step for a sign of worth.
The road ahead led not to a mountain as they'd known, but to a living peak, a colossal shape pulsing with internal light. Veins of molten color ran up its sides, and its face shifted, rearranging itself in slow, deliberate undulations as if the mountain itself was waking from a centuries-long dream. Mist coiled around its base, drawing shapes that writhed and faded, never settling on a single form.
Asyana gaped openly, her bravado stripped away. Reyland gripped the hilt of his spear, eyes wide, sweat beading on his brow despite the cold.
"Are we... still in Asirios?" Asyana whispered the words a little more than a breath.
Dellos looked at her, a fierce smile tugging at his lips. "Yes, still Asirios, but an Asirios we've never seen before. We're somewhere new. Somewhere the world hid from itself. And that..." he nodded to the living peak, its surface flickering with unknown glyphs "...is where we're meant to go."
The statues watched in eternal silence. The mountain watched too, alive with hunger and memory. The journey, Dellos knew, was just beginning.