The sky cracked open at dawn.
Not thunder. Not lightning.
But light—cold and blinding, pouring down from the heavens like a blade unsheathed.
Where once stood hills and horizon, now a great tower of white crystal pierced the clouds, casting long shadows across the land. It pulsed like a heartbeat, steady and deafening.
Callan stared at it from the ridge, his hand resting loosely on his sword's hilt.
"That's no temple," he said. "It's a beacon."
Solenne's voice was low. "They're summoning something."
Ren looked through a spyglass. "Soldiers in white plate. Wings of light. And not human."
Callan's eyes narrowed. "The Celestials have returned."
Celestials of the First Light
The Celestials were thought to be myths.
Beings forged in the earliest days, when gods still walked the earth. Warriors of the goddess of order, created to purge chaos from the world. They had vanished after the First Flame War, sealed or slain—or so history claimed.
Now, they were back.
Callan and his group camped near the edge of a ruined village swallowed by white vines, watching the procession of armored figures patrol beneath the tower. Their movements were mechanical, eerily silent. Each bore a sigil of burning wings, and their very presence warped the air.
"They're not alive," Seris muttered. "They move, but they don't breathe."
Solenne touched a tree near the tower's light. It crumbled to ash.
"This isn't light. It's sterilization. Cleansing magic at the divine level."
"They're erasing the world," Callan said.
The Voice from the Light
At midnight, the tower sang.
Not with music.
But with words no one should understand—and yet every person heard them in their own tongue.
"We are the Second Dawn. Submit, and be made whole."
"Resist, and be unmade."
The sky turned pale. The stars flickered out. And every fire within a two-mile radius extinguished at once.
The Heartflame inside Callan growled.
"She remembers you."
Callan clenched his fists.
"She should."
Infiltration
They couldn't wait for war.
They needed information.
The plan was reckless: infiltrate the tower, learn its purpose, and get out before they were detected by the full host of Celestials.
Solenne cloaked them in distortion spells. Seris charted their route past the patrols. Ren took out the sentries with shadow-arrows that dissolved after impact.
But as they passed beneath the tower's archway, a voice spoke in Callan's mind.
"You wear the body of the traitor."
"Draeven's soul stains you."
He ignored it and pressed on.
Heart of the Tower
Inside the tower, there was no gravity.
They floated through concentric rings of white crystal, each etched with living scripture that watched them as they passed.
At the core was a suspended orb of pure light—beating like a heart.
And inside that light… a prison.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of mages, scholars, even children, frozen in mid-motion. Their magic siphoned into the orb, feeding the tower's pulse.
Solenne gasped. "This is how they power it."
"They're draining anything with will," Ren whispered. "Not just mages—anyone who resists."
Callan's jaw tightened.
"We end this now."
The Warden of Purity
Before they could act, the light shifted.
A figure emerged—ten feet tall, draped in white and gold armor, no face beneath its hood, only a burning star where its head should be.
The Warden of Purity.
"You are the vessel of corruption," it spoke. "You carry the flame that once defied the light. You will be cleansed."
Callan stepped forward.
"I was forged in fire. And I don't burn so easily."
The Warden raised a blade of mirrored glass and struck.
The Battle of White and Ash
Their duel shook the tower's core.
The Warden moved like light itself—blinding, fast, merciless. Each swing of its blade shattered sound.
But Callan adapted. He didn't match speed with speed. He let the Heartflame burn slow and heavy, dragging time around him. His sword clashed with the Warden's, not in fury, but in will.
Solenne shielded the others from the tower's collapsing structure. Ren fired enchanted arrows that dissolved before they reached the Warden. Seris tried to cut the Warden's tendons, only to find it had no body to wound.
Only Callan could stand.
And then, he struck.
Not with fire.
But with memory.
He reached out and touched the Warden's flame.
And showed it what the goddess had done.
The Fracture
For a moment, the Warden faltered.
It saw Draeven's final stand. Saw the cities erased in white flame. Saw the goddess turn her back on the world she claimed to love.
The star within its head flickered.
And it whispered, "She lied."
Then the orb shattered.
The imprisoned fell to the floor, breathing, alive.
The tower began to collapse.
Escape
They ran as the sky cracked again.
The tower's fall was not like a building breaking—it unraveled, vanishing like thread in wind.
Solenne's portal barely held. As they passed through it, Callan looked back.
The Warden did not follow.
But from the remains of the tower, a single mote of white light floated upward.
And in the clouds above, an eye opened.
A divine one.
Callan stared into it without blinking.
"She's coming."
Preparing for War
Back in Virellium, the people had changed.
They no longer feared magic.
They asked to learn it.
Caedra trained them in icecraft. Solenne opened her own school of healing. Ren taught shadow archery. Seris led drills in unpredictable warfare.
And Callan?
He gathered the survivors from the Crater, from the tower, from the resistance.
He stood atop the city walls and told them the truth.
The goddess had returned.
And she would erase them all.
Unless they stood.
Together.