The Echoing Vale was silent.
Not with peace—but with the kind of silence that crushes breath and memory alike. Mist curled through the shattered trees like serpents. The wind carried no sound, no life—only the bitter scent of scorched roots and the faint metallic sting of blood long spilled.
Kael stood at the edge of the Vale, staring into the dead forest. Behind him, Ysera adjusted the gauntlet that now shimmered faintly with the same fire as Kael's. Veylan crouched nearby, fingers pressed to the ground.
"No birds," Veylan murmured. "No insects. Nothing alive."
"Or everything's hiding from what is," Ysera replied.
Kael tightened the Emberclaw, its pulse now steady and low, as if wary.
"This is where Theren fell," Kael said, scanning the ruined horizon. "Where he let the Hollow take him."
Ysera's jaw tensed. "It didn't take him. He opened himself to it. He believed the gods had failed him—failed us. The Hollow promised a fire that answered to no will but his."
"And what did it cost him?"
Veylan stood, eyes narrowed. "His name. His soul. And whatever remained of the man you once called brother."
Kael said nothing. The trees loomed like burned sentinels ahead.
They entered.
The air grew colder, heavier. Whispers drifted through the mist—snatches of thoughts, half-spoken regrets, voices Kael recognized but couldn't name. Ysera walked beside him in silence, blade drawn, flame hovering along its edge like a living tongue.
They reached the first ruin—a toppled obelisk, covered in molten chains. At its base lay a broken mask.
Kael knelt.
It was his. One worn by the Flameguard.
He picked it up, turning it slowly in his hands.
"Theren didn't just forget me," he murmured. "He erased me."
Suddenly, the mists swirled violently. A figure stepped through—cloaked in blackened robes, violet eyes gleaming like coals through his hood. His presence pressed on the air like a storm about to break.
"Not forgotten," the figure said. "Not erased."
Kael stood, eyes sharp. "Who are you?"
The figure tilted his head. "Names are for those bound by time. But you may call me Ashseer. I serve the will of the Hollow Flame."
Ysera stepped forward, blade raised. "Then you walk in death."
Ashseer smiled.
"No. I walk in truth."
With a flick of his hand, the ground trembled—and from the ruins around them, figures rose. Twisted remnants of the Flameguard—bodies charred, eyes hollow, weapons fused to flesh. They shambled forward in silence.
Kael raised the Emberclaw. Fire surged.
Ashseer didn't flinch.
"This is your warning, Ember King," he said. "Turn back. The Second Cinder is not yours. It chose its master long ago."
Kael's voice was fire.
"Then I'll unmake its choice."
He lunged.
Fire met shadow.
The forest lit with battle.
And far beyond the Vale, in the heart of a crumbling citadel, a man made of ash and memory stood atop a burning spire. His eyes—once gold, now gray—looked westward.
"A brother returns," said Ashthorn.
His voice, like the wind over a grave, whispered:
"Let him come."
Kael's fist ignited mid-swing.
The Emberclaw struck the first of the corrupted Flameguard like a hammer of suns. The creature exploded in a burst of molten armor and ash, shrieking as its twisted form dissolved in flame. But two more took its place, their fused blades hacking with soulless precision.
"Hold the line!" Kael shouted.
Ysera answered with a note—just a single word in a forgotten tongue. Her blade responded, arcs of radiant flame spiraling outward in a protective ring. Three more guards fell, disintegrating before they could cross the barrier.
Veylan moved like smoke, slipping between enemies, daggers cutting with surgical grace. Every strike found a gap. Every motion was a dance with death.
But Ashseer was already gone.
The prophet of the Hollow had vanished into the mists, leaving behind a battlefield meant to bleed time.
Kael ducked a blow, twisted low, and sent a jet of fire through a cluster of undead. "This is a delay," he said through gritted teeth. "He's buying time for Ashthorn."
Ysera nodded, breath steady despite the chaos. "Then we take it from him."
A screech pierced the air—something massive descending through the fog.
Kael looked up.
And froze.
A creature tore through the clouds above—winged, burning, malformed. Once a flame-drake, now twisted by Hollow corruption. Its wings were scorched bone, eyes dripping violet fire, and its body stitched together by brands of broken runes.
Kael braced. "Incoming!"
The drake slammed into the battlefield with a roar that shattered stone. Its breath washed across the ground—not fire, but a stream of black flame that ate heat and light alike. Ysera shielded them with a dome of her song, notes vibrating in a brilliant pulse.
"We can't kill it," Veylan said. "Not without risking the Vale collapsing."
Kael's eyes burned. "Then we unbind it."
He charged toward the beast as it turned, maw opening to scream. With a roar of his own, Kael leapt, flames twisting around his form. The Emberclaw blazed, not gold this time—but white.
He struck the drake's head.
Not to destroy—but to purge.
The runes along its hide reacted, flaring violently as the pure flame sank into its cursed core. The beast screamed—louder, higher—thrashing in a spiral of black and white.
Then silence.
It fell.
Twitching. Alive, but freed.
Kael stumbled back, smoke rising from his armor, breath ragged.
Ysera caught him. "You changed the fire."
"I didn't mean to," he gasped. "It just… it knew what to do."
Veylan stood nearby, staring at the fallen drake. "White fire is old magic. Older than the Ember Crown. You've touched something… deeper."
Kael looked toward the deeper mists where Ashseer had vanished.
"We follow him. Now. Before Ashthorn prepares."
Ysera placed her hand over her chest.
"I can still hear Theren's flame. It burns wrong, but it sings. He's waiting."
And in the far-off fortress of the Hollow, Ashthorn opened his eyes.
He stood before a burning throne, alone—save for the flickering shadows that whispered to him.
"They come."
He smiled.
"Let them see what true fire becomes."
The cursed forest beyond the Echoing Vale had no name.
Locals who once charted its borders called it "The Whispering Deep," but their tongues had long since silenced, and their maps had burned. What Kael, Ysera, and Veylan now walked was not forest, not truly—it was memory, twisted into form. Every tree bent inward. Every path led somewhere it shouldn't. The air shimmered with false warmth, like the breath of a beast about to exhale flame.
"We're being watched," Veylan whispered, crouched low and silent.
"No," Ysera replied grimly. "We're being remembered."
Kael didn't speak. His hand never left the Emberclaw, the gauntlet pulsing with a steady rhythm—as if it were counting steps, or heartbeats. The further they moved, the more the forest seemed to change around them. Branches curved into archways of bone. Bark darkened into obsidian. Time slowed.
Kael turned, suddenly alert. "Did you see that?"
No one answered.
Because they had disappeared.
Ysera and Veylan—gone.
"Ysera!" he shouted. "Veylan!"
Only echoes replied, each one slightly off, as if another voice followed his, trailing behind like a shadow with teeth.
Kael spun around.
And saw himself.
A figure stood a dozen paces away—identical in form. The same armor. The same face. But wrong. Its eyes were hollow, its Emberclaw cracked and weeping black flame.
The thing spoke. "You burned us all."
Kael raised his gauntlet. "You're not me."
The double smiled. "I am what you'll become… if you try to save him."
Then it lunged.
Kael met it head-on. Fire clashed with voidfire, each strike distorting the forest around them. Every blow from the false Kael left trails of memory—flashes of moments that never were: Ysera lying in ruins, Veylan pierced by his own blade, Ashthorn seated on a throne of Kael's bones.
"No," Kael growled. "You're not my fate."
With a final surge of true flame, the real Emberclaw blazed in white once more—cutting clean through the echo. The double screamed, unraveling into smoke and silence.
The forest rippled—and spat Ysera and Veylan back into existence.
"Kael!" Ysera called. "The forest—it's defending Ashthorn. It divides minds. Forces us to face pieces of ourselves."
Veylan rubbed his temples. "I saw my death... and I believed it."
Kael breathed heavily. "We stay together now. The Hollow Path is meant to break us before we arrive."
They pressed forward.
And above them, the trees opened into a clearing of shattered glass and buried statues—each one a warrior in mid-scream, petrified in agony.
Ysera's voice lowered.
"This is the threshold."
Veylan nodded, pointing ahead. "Beyond that ridge… Ashthorn's citadel."
Kael stepped forward, flame trailing his boots.
"Then the fire returns home."
Far ahead, on the spire of black stone, Ashthorn stood watching—cloak billowing like smoke, crown of embers burning in defiance of the sky.
The second Cinder was awake.
And waiting.
Within the Hollow Citadel, beneath a sky that had forgotten stars, Ashthorn prepared.
He stood in a vast chamber carved from obsidian and bone, the walls lined with relics of the old world—broken banners, shattered helms, swords melted into shadow. Flames danced along the edges of the room, but they gave no warmth. This was not fire. This was remembrance made wrath.
Ashthorn extended his hand over a blackened basin. The flames curled away from him, as if afraid.
"They walk the Hollow Path," came a voice behind him.
Ashthorn didn't turn. "I know. I felt him."
Ashseer approached, head bowed. "Kael wears the Emberclaw. The white flame has answered him."
"I taught him to wield flame," Ashthorn murmured. "But he never learned its cost."
Ashseer hesitated. "He changed. He… resisted the forest. Purged the drake."
Ashthorn chuckled—low and bitter.
"Of course he did. He was always stubborn. Righteous. Even when the gods mocked him, even when his kingdom burned, he believed he could fix it."
Ashseer stepped closer. "You once followed him."
Ashthorn turned sharply.
"I loved him," he said, voice ragged with ancient fury. "I fought beside him when the sky split. I held the line when the gods sent beasts of unmaking. And when the flame turned on him—when they abandoned him—I begged him to run. To let the old world die."
He stared into the basin, where Kael's reflection rippled.
"But Kael does not run."
Ashseer's voice was careful. "Then you will kill him?"
"No," Ashthorn said quietly.
"I will break him."
He turned toward a great iron door at the chamber's far end. With a gesture, it swung open, revealing a staircase of molten stone descending into the citadel's heart. Screams echoed faintly from below—centuries old, yet still burning.
"Ready the flameborn," Ashthorn said. "Unleash the Shard Choir. When Kael reaches the gates, I want him to remember everything he failed to save."
Ashseer bowed. "It will be done."
Ashthorn watched the flames return to the basin, flickering now with Kael's face—scarred, angry, and burning brighter than it ever had in life.
"He's come to reclaim what I saved from ruin," Ashthorn whispered.
"But the fire does not belong to kings anymore."
Outside the citadel, hidden beneath cloaks of ash and spell, Kael, Ysera, and Veylan crouched behind a ridge overlooking the obsidian gates. The spires loomed like blades stabbed into the sky, and the walls pulsed with runes that whispered.
Ysera stared ahead, her voice steady.
"He knows you're coming."
Kael nodded. "Then we don't hide."
He rose, fire curling around him like a living storm.
"No more running. No more waiting."
He placed his hand on the ancient gate.
"I'm coming, Theren."
And the Hollow answered with silence… then song.
The choir had begun.
The gates of the Hollow Citadel screamed as they opened.
Not with hinges—but with voices.
Kael, Ysera, and Veylan stood at the foot of the obsidian threshold as runes cracked and split, releasing a sound like a thousand shattered mirrors weeping in unison. A tide of fractured voices poured out—the Shard Choir. Spirits of fallen warriors, their souls shattered by the Hollow and forged into instruments of suffering.
They came in waves, their forms crystalline and jagged, twisted into shapes half-man, half-echo. Their bodies reflected the light around them—reflected memories. As Kael stared at them, he saw faces he knew.
His father.
His mentor.
His first captain.
His childhood friend.
All of them dead. All of them singing his failure.
"Don't look at their faces!" Ysera shouted. "They feed on guilt!"
Kael roared and ignited the Emberclaw. The white flame surged outward in a defiant blaze, searing a path through the nearest line of shard-beasts. Their song shifted to shrieks, but they kept coming.
Veylan vanished into shadow, slipping between crystalline forms and driving daggers into weak points—where memory frayed.
Kael's every strike was met with a vision:
—A boy crying in a burning village.
—A queen abandoned on a collapsing bridge.
—His own hands letting go of Theren's before the abyss took him.
He gritted his teeth, flame pulsing brighter.
"You are not my regrets."
Ysera moved beside him, her blade carving radiant arcs through the twisted spirits. Her voice rose—not a scream, but a song of her own. Ancient, melodic, woven with the names of the dead who chose peace.
The Shard Choir faltered.
"They can be silenced," she said between strikes. "But not by rage. By remembrance. The truth of who they were—before the Hollow claimed them."
Kael understood.
He stepped into the next wave—not as a soldier, but as a king. Each name he remembered, he spoke aloud. Each soul he faced, he honored—not as a failure, but as a flame once bright.
One by one, the shards cracked—and faded.
The path to the inner gates opened.
But the victory was short.
A thunderous howl echoed from the dark beyond.
Something massive approached. Not a man. Not a ghost.
The Ashbound Warden.
An ancient war-beast of flame and stone, bound by Theren himself during the Fall. It bore Theren's sigil, now twisted into the Hollow's mark. As it stepped into the light, Kael felt the ground shake.
"This one," Veylan muttered, stepping back, "we don't talk to."
Kael nodded.
"No. We burn through."
Flame met fury once more.
And deep inside the citadel, Ashthorn stood upon his balcony, watching the white fire grow.
"Come, brother," he whispered. "Let us see who truly commands the flame."