The morning after the Eighth Flame's awakening came without warmth.Ash still clung to the valley floor, and the air shimmered faintly where mana currents bled from the earth — silent proof that something ancient had stirred.
Lyn stood at the edge of the plateau, watching the horizon pulse with faint threads of light. Every heartbeat, the shard in his hand flickered in time with those distant rhythms, as though answering a call only he could hear.
Behind him, the Unbound broke camp in silence. No one spoke of what they had witnessed. Even Arden, usually the first to curse the gods, kept quiet as he strapped his twin blades to his back.
"We're heading north again?" Rhea asked, tightening the clasps of her armor.
Lyn nodded slowly. "Beyond the Veilscar Range. The shard's energy points there — the next fragment must lie within."
Arden grunted. "The Veilscar's a graveyard, Lyn. Whole expedition teams vanished trying to chart it."
"Then we won't chart it," Lyn replied. "We'll follow the resonance."
Umbra materialized beside him in a slow swirl of black mist, its wings folding like drifting smoke. —The resonance cuts through ley-lines corrupted by the Council's rituals. You will see mirages, ghosts, reflections of what once was. Do not trust them.
"Since when do I trust anything?" Lyn muttered.
—You trust too much, Umbra replied, voice low. That is both your gift and your undoing.
They set out as the light dimmed, crossing into the foothills of the Veilscar. The terrain shifted from gray rock to fields of cracked glass where old mana storms had crystallized the soil. Every step left behind faint echoes — the land itself whispering fragments of sound.
It was Rhea who first heard the voices clearly. She froze mid-step, eyes narrowing. "Do you hear that?"
Arden raised a brow. "The wind?"
She shook her head. "No. Chanting."
They crested a ridge — and there, among the fractured stones, stood a half-buried ruin. Tall spires of bone-white stone curved inward like ribs, surrounding a circular altar etched with fading runes.
Umbra's tone darkened. —A shrine. Not to the Council's gods… but to those who came before.
Lyn approached cautiously. The air around the altar shimmered, and a ghostly figure appeared — robed in threads of mana, face hidden beneath a mask shaped like a serpent's skull.
"The Fracture spreads. The flames return.When the eight awaken, the sky shall bleed once more."
The apparition's voice echoed through the ruins, layered — not one voice, but hundreds.
Lyn's pulse quickened. "You're… one of the old seers?"
"We are what remains of them. The prophecy was written in our blood, carried through the Veilscar winds. You bear its mark."
"You mean my crest," Lyn said.
"Your crest is no mark — it is a promise. The Veilscar Prophecy binds the first shadowborn to the Eighth Flame. To heal the world… or end it."
Rhea stepped forward. "End it? How? The Council already broke half the world trying to control the flames."
"Control is never what breaks the world," the seer's echo murmured. "It is fear. And the Council feared the Eighth more than any god."
The ground trembled beneath their feet. From the cracks in the altar rose a surge of mana — silver-white, burning cold. Images flashed within it: a younger Lyn, standing in an unfamiliar forest; Umbra chained to an obsidian pillar; eight crests circling above them like stars.
Then it all vanished.
Lyn staggered back, clutching his head. "What was that?!"
Umbra's wings snapped open. —A memory of what is yet to come. The prophecy is folding time around your bond.
"You're saying I saw the future?"
—A possible one.
Arden exhaled sharply. "Fantastic. We've gone from fighting the Council to rewriting history."
The seer's voice lingered, faint now — fading like smoke in the wind.
"Follow the flame north, shadowborn. Beyond the Veilscar lies the cradle of the first covenant. There, the truth of your bond awaits."
Then the apparition dispersed, leaving only the sound of the whispering wind.
For a long time, no one spoke.
Finally, Lyn turned toward the horizon — toward the storm-black mountains in the distance. "The cradle of the first covenant…"
Rhea adjusted her cloak, her voice quiet but steady. "Then that's where we go next."
Umbra drifted beside him, its eyes glowing faint crimson. —Be warned, Lyn. The Veilscar doesn't just test strength. It tests truth.
He nodded once. "Then it's time the world learned ours."
And as they stepped into the storm's path, the shard pulsed once more — brighter this time, echoing a rhythm that belonged to something older than gods, older than rebellion itself.