The crater was still cooling, the glass-slicked earth hissing as a light, grey rain began to fall. It was a mournful sound, like the planet itself was weeping for the wound it had just sustained. Kaelen sat on a jagged fragment of the dead Star-Spire, his body draped in a heavy, fur-lined cloak provided by Sissik. He looked like a fallen god—his skin dull, the cracks in his Starlight-Steel glowing with a faint, rhythmic violet light that pulsed like a dying ember.
Every breath felt heavy, as if he were inhaling iron filings. The "Void-Link" had left a residue in his lungs, a psychic soot that refused to clear. Beside him, the Scepter of the Unspoken lay dormant, its once-vibrant gems now cloudy and dim.
Ria stood guard ten paces ahead, her spear leveled at the mist. She didn't look back at him, but Kaelen could see the tension in her shoulders. She was wound tight, a spring ready to snap. "We have company," she said, her voice a sharp blade cutting through the hiss of the rain. "And they didn't bring flowers."
From the mist at the edge of the valley, a line of steam-powered walkers and armored knights emerged. These weren't the "Gilded Lilies" or the low-level bounty hunters they had brushed aside in Oakhaven. These were the High Wardens of the Grand Adventurer's Guild—the "Final Wall." They were the elite force that usually only mobilized when a mountain started walking or a dragon decided to turn a kingdom into a hearth.
At their head was a man Kaelen recognized from the "Wanted" posters he had spent months avoiding: Commander Vane. Vane was a legend of the Iron-Crags, a veteran who had lost his arm to a Chimera and replaced it with a prosthetic made of enchanted iron and clockwork gears. His eyes were cold, grey, and looked like they had seen the end of a dozen civilizations before breakfast.
"Stand down, Korg," Kaelen said, his voice raspy, sounding more like Ignis than himself.
Korg, who had been bracing his shield against the advance of a three-legged steam-walker, grunted and stepped back, though he kept his hand on the hilt of his hammer. The goliath's eyes were narrowed; he had spent too many years being hunted by men in these uniforms to trust them now.
Commander Vane halted his troops fifty yards away. The steam-walkers hissed, venting hot pressure into the damp air, and the knights lowered their lances. Vane dismounted his mechanical steed—a beast of brass and piston—and walked forward alone. He stopped ten paces from Kaelen, his gaze lingering on the violet cracks in Kaelen's skin and the dead, obsidian needle of the Spire behind him.
"The reports said you were a monster, Kaelen of Oakhaven," Vane said. His voice was a gravelly baritone that seemed to vibrate in the ground. "They said you were a 'Calamity-Host' who would burn Gaea to a cinder just to keep your own heart beating."
"I've had a busy week, Commander," Kaelen replied, standing up slowly. His joints creaked with a metallic groan, a sound that made the nearby knights flinch. "Are you here to collect the bounty? Because I'm not in a very patient mood, and Ignis is even worse."
Vane didn't reach for his sword. Instead, he looked up at the sky. The Planetary Shield—Kaelen's desperate creation—shimmered faintly against the bruised purple clouds. It looked like a soap bubble caught in a storm, beautiful and terrifyingly fragile.
"The bounty was cancelled the moment the sky turned purple," Vane said, and for the first time, Kaelen saw a flicker of something human in the soldier's eyes: unadulterated terror. "Half of the Guild's outposts in the North were leveled in the first hour of the descent. We've lost the Salt-Marshes. We've lost the Iron-Crags. The 'Silent King' is dead, and the order he kept through fear has vanished. The world is screaming, Kaelen."
Vane looked back at the Spire. "We didn't come to fight a dragon. We came to find a General. The Guild is fractured. The kings of the five provinces are hiding in their deep-earth bunkers, praying the stone is thick enough to hide their scent from those... things. The people are looking for a miracle, and unfortunately for all of us, you're the only one currently performing them."
"You want an alliance?" Pip shouted, scrambling over a pile of debris, his goggles covered in mud. "After you spent months trying to put Kaelen's head on a pike? You hunted us like animals through the Weeping Grove! You nearly killed Elara in the Divide!"
"I want survival!" Vane barked back, his iron hand clenching into a fist that hissed with steam. "I have ten thousand trained hunters, three fleets of heavy airships, and enough mana-crystals to power a small sun. But we are useless! Our blades bounce off their armor like we're hitting them with feathers. Our mages can't read their magic—it's not magic, it's geometry! It's hunger!"
Vane did something then that silenced the entire valley. He knelt. It wasn't the kneel of a subject to a king; it was the grim submission of a man who knew he was outmatched by the universe.
"Tell us how to kill them," Vane whispered. "Lead the Guild. We will give the Ember Spark Company total control over the global defense. Every resource Gaea has left—every forge, every laboratory, every soldier—is yours. Just tell me we have a chance."
"HE IS AN ANT BEGGING A BOOT NOT TO STEP," Ignis rumbled, his voice dripping with draconic disdain. "BUT THE ANT HAS HILLS, ECHO. HE HAS TUNNELS. HE HAS NUMBERS. HIS IRON... HIS SHIPS... THEY ARE THE TEETH WE NEED TO BITE BACK AT THE HIVE."
Kaelen looked at his team. Ria was staring at Vane with a look of pure skepticism; she knew that alliances built on fear often ended in betrayal. Elara and Sissik were silent, sensing the immense weight of the decision. But Pip... Pip's eyes were darting toward the steam-walkers. The gnome was already calculating how to retro-fit Guild tech with Star-Eater crystals.
"There are conditions," Kaelen said, his voice gaining strength. The violet light in his veins flared brighter. "The Guild is no longer an independent body. You answer to the Ember Spark. My team handles the strategy. Your 'High Wardens' become my shock troops. And the first thing we do is turn Oakhaven—the city you let rot—into a fortress that can withstand a god."
Vane nodded solemnly. "The 'Iron Accord.' I'll sign it in blood if it means my men don't have to watch another Spire fall on their homes."
"Good," Kaelen said, stepping off the fragment of the Spire. "Because I just spent ten minutes inside their heads. They aren't just here for the mana, Vane. They're here for the First Cinder. The source of all magic on Gaea. And they know exactly where it's buried."
"Where?" Ria asked, her spear lowering slightly.
Kaelen looked toward the Uncharted West, the one place on the map that remained a blank, white void. "The Forge of the First Dragon. The place where Ignis was born. If we don't get there before the Star-Eaters find a way through the shield, the 'One-Week Clock' won't just be for me. It'll be for every living soul on this planet. The countdown hasn't stopped, Ria. It's just moved to a larger scale."
Just as the words left his mouth, a piercing, high-pitched alarm sounded from Pip's wrist-mounted sensor. It was a sound of digital agony.
"Kaelen! The Hive-Ship!" Pip screamed, pointing a trembling finger at the sky.
The massive obsidian fortress in orbit wasn't descending anymore. It had stopped its slow drift. Now, it was glowing with a blinding, white-hot intensity that eclipsed the sun. A beam of concentrated Void-energy—a pillar of absolute nothingness—shot out from its prow. It hit the Planetary Shield with the force of a thousand falling moons.
The sky didn't just light up; it shattered. The gold veil Kaelen had nearly died to create began to spider-web with black cracks. The sound was like a million violins snapping at once.
"They're not waiting for us to finish the conversation!" Kaelen roared, his Starlight-Steel skin reigniting with a desperate orange flare as he fought to reinforce the shield from a distance. "Vane! Get your men to the airships! We're going to the West! If that shield falls while we're in the open, we're all ash!"
The Commander didn't hesitate. He stood and signaled his walkers. "Wardens! To the 'Valkyrie' transport! We move on the Hero's command!"
The alliance was born in fire, and the race for the First Forge had officially begun. As Kaelen watched the sky crack, he knew one thing for certain: the boy from Oakhaven was gone. There was only the Dragon, the Star-Eater, and the dying world between them.