The wind changed.
Not in the way winds usually do shifting direction, rising or falling but in a way that made the hairs on Kael's neck stand. It became heavier, like it carried the weight of something ancient.
They had made camp at the edge of the wildlands, beneath a broken arch of stone twisted with vine and root. The forest behind them had thinned, the northern tundra unfolding in waves of grey-green brush and low fog. The others were gathered near the fire tired, quiet.
Kael stood apart, facing the east.
Sarya noticed his stillness first.
"You feel it too," she said quietly, walking to his side.
Kael didn't answer right away. His eyes scanned the horizon as if expecting something monstrous to rise from it.
"Something woke up," he said finally. His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.
Sarya's brows drew together. "What was it?"
He swallowed.
"I don't know. But it knows me.
Liora sat close to the fire, knees drawn up, watching the flames as they sputtered in the cold wind. She shivered not from the chill, but from the strange wrongness in the air. Like a thread had snapped in the fabric of the world and the pieces hadn't settled yet.
Beside her, Maren, their quiet tracker, was sharpening her blade but kept glancing toward Kael. Even she normally unreadable looked uneasy.
Ash, the boy with storm-eyes, didn't even pretend to relax. His knuckles were white around the handle of his staff. "I don't like this," he muttered. "The air's full of pressure. Like right before lightning strikes."
"The sky hasn't changed," Maren said.
"It doesn't have to. She changed it."
Liora looked at him. "She?"
Ash didn't answer. He was looking into the flames. "You felt it first, didn't you?" he asked her. "That snap that heartbeat that wasn't yours."
Liora nodded, eyes wide.
"She's awake," Ash whispered. "The Sleeper. And if she's awake… we're not ready."
Kael turned from the horizon and rejoined the group. He looked older in that moment not in his face, but in the weight of his presence. The firelight flickered across the scars on his arms, each one whispering stories of battles long past, some too deep to name.
"Pack light," he said. "We move within the hour."
Maren raised an eyebrow. "We just stopped."
"Something's coming," he said, "and I won't be standing still when it gets here."
Liora stood. "Is it her?"
Kael looked at her really looked and for a moment, she saw fear in his eyes.
"I don't know," he said. "But whatever it is, it's tied to the past. My past."
As the group prepared in silence, Sarya approached Kael again, her voice low. "You think she remembers?"
"She was buried so deep even the Order thought she was a myth," he said. "And now… I felt her anger. Like a blade scraping across the inside of my skull."
"You loved her."
He didn't deny it.
"She was light and fire. I was shadow and duty. We weren't meant to survive." He looked at Sarya, pain and guilt etched into the lines of his face. "But we did. And then I betrayed her."
Sarya's voice was gentle. "What really happened, Kael?"
His silence spoke volumes.
They traveled under the deepening dusk, moving swiftly across the moors. Each step felt heavier not from exhaustion, but from the weight of approaching fate.
Around them, the world whispered in strange ways.
Birdsong had vanished.
Clouds twisted into unfamiliar shapes.
And the wind carried a scent not of rain or earth, but of ash.
Atop a ridge, they paused. The valley below was empty, save for jagged stone and skeletal trees. In the far distance, the Veilspire Mountains rose like the teeth of some sleeping god.
There, above the tallest peak, a soft, unnatural glow lit the clouds red.
Kael stared.
Maren cursed softly.
"That's not fire," Ash murmured. "That's her."
"Then we're already too close," Sarya said.
"No," Kael replied, voice grim. "We're right where we need to be."
That night, they took shelter in a forgotten waystone cave remnants of the old roads that once connected the shrines of the gods. Liora sat cross-legged on a slab of stone, fingers brushing a faded carving of a winged woman wrapped in flame.
"It's her," she whispered.
Kael nodded. "Seliora. The goddess they tried to erase."
"Is she really my mother?" Liora asked.
The question made everyone pause.
Kael looked at her, saw the truth already growing in her eyes.
"You carry more than her blood," he said. "You carry her fire."
Liora turned to the stone carving again. The firelight behind her flickered, and for a moment, her silhouette seemed to blur like a candle behind stained glass.
Sarya watched with a strange tightness in her chest.
"She's not ready for what's coming," Sarya whispered to Kael later, as the others slept.
"No one ever is," he said. "But the world doesn't wait."
In the deepest hour of the night, Kael couldn't sleep.
He stood alone outside the cave, staring at the stars.
And then he heard it.
A voice. Soft. Familiar.
Kael.
He turned.
No one there.
But the air shimmered faintly. A trick of moonlight… or memory?
He closed his eyes and behind the darkness, an image burned
A throne of flame. A child crying. His own hands, bloodied, holding the blade.
And her voice "You were supposed to love me."
He opened his eyes with a gasp.
The fire was spreading.
Not in the world but in his mind.