The first blow came not from a catapult —
but from Elara's howl.
Low. Long. Ancient.
It carried across the charred valley, through the ash-laced winds, and into the molten walls of the Flame Crucible.
The towers answered.
Not with noise, but with movement.
Stone shifted.
Gates opened themselves.
Like the forge wanted to be entered.
Caelina stood at the front, eyes hard.
"No more waiting. No more prophecy. We bring her to the ground."
She lifted her salt-moon blade.
Behind her, thousands moved as one — not an army. A vengeance.
Zela took the east flank with her Flamebreakers.
Tavian and the exiled Fireborn swept around to the western smoke vents.
Elara ran the center — hybrid, armored, terrifying.
And Caelina?
She charged the front.
Straight through the Crucible's cursed maw.
Inside the walls, the Crucible was alive.
Pipes screamed steam.
Stone bled black oil.
Sigils pulsed with heat and memory.
As they moved through twisted alleys and breathing corridors, figures emerged from the smoke:
Wolves stitched together from ash and steel.Pureborn acolytes with no eyes, only brands.Flaming serpents bound to obsidian masks.
The Hollow clashed with them in brutal silence.
No time for cries.
Only fire.
And fang.
Elara fought like thunder had grown a heartbeat.
She tore through flaming beasts, her claws glowing with mirrored moonlight.
"Let them burn," she roared. "We were born from something hotter!"
She carved a path wide enough for ten wolves, her body blazing with ancestral magic.
Meanwhile, at the smoke vents, Tavian's company planted saltbombs — destabilizing the outer towers.
"Once they go, the flame core will lose pressure," he told his second-in-command.
"Won't that kill us too?" the rebel asked.
Tavian shrugged.
"If it does, we deserved it."
Zela's side met resistance in the form of fire priests — chanting in unison, setting the ground itself alight.
Trapped, she shouted to her team:
"Break the rhythm — they can't summon without breath!"
The Flamebreakers surged forward, muffling chants with arrows and smoke. Zela kicked one into a burning pit herself.
But a dagger caught her in the side.
She staggered. Dropped to one knee.
Back at the Crucible's center, Caelina found the Vein Room.
The heart of the forge.
A column of flame rose from deep underground — twisting, screaming, filled with names.
Not words. Names. She heard them — hers, her mother's, Tavian's, even wolves long dead.
"She's using our bloodlines as fuel," Caelina whispered.
From the flame, a shape began to form.
Feminine.
Crowned.
Miren.
But not as she was.
As something more.
Her body glowed like a glass blade fresh from the kiln.
Veins of gold fire ran up her arms.
Her hair floated, burning without smoke.
Her eyes — no longer eyes — just twin vortexes of starlight and hunger.
"You came," she said, voice echoing from inside Caelina's own skull.
Caelina raised her blade.
"I came to finish what our ancestors were too afraid to do."
Miren hovered above the flame.
"You can't kill a god when you still fear being a girl."
She flung her arm — and the flame leapt out like a whip.
Caelina dove.
The battle had reached the core.
Every corridor burned. Every name screamed.
Zela, bleeding, lit her last saltbomb and threw it into the east tower.
"Tell Caelina I made it loud."
The tower detonated, collapsing into the lower chambers.
Tavian's bombs went off seconds later, splitting the western flank into chaos.
But Miren's ritual didn't stop.
The forge had become her womb.
Caelina, singed and furious, climbed the central altar where Miren floated.
"Your power comes from stolen blood."
Miren smiled.
"All power does. You just tell prettier stories about it."
Caelina lunged — blade first.
Miren caught it mid-air.
And shattered it.
Silence.
Then Caelina whispered:
"You shouldn't have done that."
She opened her palm.
Revealed a shard of salt-glass, wrapped in hair and old blood.
Her mother's blood.
The First Queen.
She plunged it into the ground.
And everything shook.
The flame column screamed.
Miren reeled, shrieking as the blood binding shattered.
Caelina rose, pulling a new blade from the altar floor — one forged from the pain of the lineages, one that knew Miren's name too well.
She lifted it.
And said:
"I am not your sister.
I am your reckoning."