The capital slept beneath watchfires.
From the highest tower, the Ashen King of Black looked down at a city quieter than it had ever been.
Fear had structure now.
Curfews.
Inspections.
Knights in blackened steel patrolling intersections long after midnight.
He could feel their obedience through the Flame — faint threads tying them to him.
Not mindless.
But aligned.
Below the palace, the cavern pulsed stronger each night.
The Flame no longer hovered small and contained.
It had grown.
Its core now held a darkness so dense it seemed to swallow its own light.
They stir, it whispered inside him.
Vaelrion closed his eyes.
"Where?"
Images flickered across his thoughts.
A ruined monastery swallowed by vines.
A desert canyon carved by forgotten rivers.
A forest older than language.
Three points.
Three pulses.
"They awaken," the Flame continued.
"Bring them."
Vaelrion's jaw tightened.
"And if someone else finds them first?"
The Flame's answer was cold.
Then they will burn.
⸻
Miles away, beneath a sky heavy with approaching rain, Alfon knelt beside a small fire.
He stared into it too long.
Kaelen paced nearby, restless as a caged animal.
Maelor watched them both.
"You feel it," Maelor said quietly.
Alfon did not look up.
"The air is different."
"Yes."
Kaelen stopped pacing. "You said fragments were scattered."
"They are," Maelor replied.
"And one grows louder."
Alfon finally met his eyes.
"The King?"
"Yes."
Maelor's voice held something darker this time.
"But not only him."
A low rumble of thunder rolled across the hills.
Kaelen folded his arms.
"Good," he said. "Let them wake. I'm tired of hiding."
Maelor stepped toward him.
"Anger is sharp," he said gently. "But it dulls quickly if swung without control."
Kaelen's eyes flared.
"They killed my family."
"Yes."
"And if you rush unprepared, you join them."
Silence.
The rain began.
Alfon held his hand over the fire.
For a brief second —
The flame bent toward him.
Not from wind.
From something else.
He pulled back quickly.
Maelor noticed.
But said nothing yet.
⸻
Far to the east, in a monastery long abandoned, stone statues wept black liquid.
Cracks spread across the floor of the central chamber.
Beneath the altar, something pulsed.
Not fire.
Not light.
A shard of shadow embedded deep within rock.
For centuries it had slept.
Now —
It felt the Ashen King.
It felt the central Flame growing stronger.
And it responded.
The ground trembled.
A hooded wanderer sheltering within the ruins looked up in confusion.
The cracks reached his feet.
Black smoke seeped through the floor.
And then—
The stone shattered.
The fragment rose slowly into the air.
Smaller than the King's Flame.
But darker.
Hungrier.
The wanderer screamed as tendrils of shadow wrapped around him.
His body convulsed.
Then stilled.
When he stood again—
His eyes were no longer human.
⸻
Back beneath the palace, the Ashen King smiled faintly.
"One has awakened."
The Flame burned hotter.
The gathering begins.
⸻
In the forest, Alfon jolted awake from sleep.
He had seen it.
A man consumed by shadow.
A shard rising from stone.
He could feel it — faint, but real.
"It's not just him," Alfon whispered.
Maelor opened his eyes slowly.
"No," he said.
"It never was."
The rain fell harder.
The world had begun to tilt.
And the boys who lost their village were no longer running from fire.
They were standing at the edge of something far older than revenge.
The fragments were waking.
The Ashen King was ascending.
And the balance of creation —
Was beginning to fracture again