The obsidian fortress hung in the sky like a judgment.
Chains of molten fire suspended it from clouds that should've been wind—but were still. Dead. Refusing to move.
Below, the wasteland quivered.
Campsite fires guttered out. Birds vanished. Even the roots that usually twisted around Aero's feet had retreated into the ground like frightened children.
Kaeli was already barking orders to the Verdenthorn guard.
"Evacuate the western trenches. Lock down the aquifer. All spellcasters stay low—no life resonance!"
Mica gritted her teeth. "Why? What is that place?"
Kaeli answered without turning.
"A prison."
Aero's eyes never left the floating castle.
"Whose?"
Kaeli finally met his gaze.
"Ours."
Hundreds of years ago, during the rebellion of the First Valaryn, the resistance had captured something terrible. Not an army. Not a god.
But a mage—one that had no name, no soul, only hunger.
The old rebels couldn't kill it.
So they built a fortress around it.
Buried it in the sky.
And forgot it.
Until now.
As the castle drew closer, Aero felt it.
The same way he sensed roots or flowers or the heartbeat of an injured scout.
But this was not life.
It was life inverted.
It was want.
A hunger for blood. A pulse like a dying sun. The raw need to consume and return everything to ash.
Mica gripped her head.
"It's screaming inside me. Like it's trying to feed."
Aero placed a hand on her shoulder and pulsed his life force outward—not to heal, but to shield.
Mica gasped as the pressure faded. "Thanks."
"I don't think it's just screaming," Aero said quietly.
"I think it's calling me."
Later that night, Aero stood alone at the roots of the Verdenthorn.
He pressed his palm to the whitewood.
The Resonance thrummed with heat.
"Not all things buried should be forgotten," the voice of the First whispered.
"That castle is not a prison anymore. It is a beacon."
Aero clenched his fists. "For who?"
The roots didn't answer.
But the wind did.
Carrying the scent of burned flesh.
The first attack came at dawn.
They weren't soldiers.
They weren't monsters.
They were the dead.
Men and women who had died in the wasteland long ago—resistance fighters, raiders, even old Empire scouts—now walked with eyes glowing orange.
Their bodies were stitched with ash and ember.
And they marched toward Verdenthorn with silent purpose.
Kaeli called them "Ashborn."
Aero called them what they were.
"Stolen life," he muttered. "They've been reanimated using Resonance that isn't theirs."
"How's that possible?" Mica asked, already charging wind in her palms.
"I don't know," he said. "But it means something inside that fortress can steal life force. Not just sense it."
They met the Ashborn at the gates.
The first wave was brutal.
Kaeli fought with bone and root—her spells pulling memories from the ground and hurling them like whips of vengeance.
Mica became a cyclone of wind and fists, cracking skulls and slicing ash from the air.
And Aero—he fought with purpose.
He didn't kill the Ashborn.
He freed them.
With every pulse of life magic, he unraveled the false threads tying soul to body. He burned the stolen Resonance away, leaving only silence behind.
But it drained him.
Every burst left his vision blurred, his veins hot with exhaustion.
Yet he didn't stop.
Not when children screamed.Not when roots began to bleed.Not when the fortress above opened its gates and dropped a figure from the sky.
It landed in the center of the battlefield.
A man—tall, shirtless, skin inked with runes that shimmered with volcanic heat. His eyes were closed. His aura pulsed like a second sun.
He opened his mouth—
And breathed fire across the battlefield.
Not red.Not gold.White.
The kind of fire that does not burn.
It erases.
Kaeli's roots incinerated. Mica was blown back mid-air.
Aero stepped forward, trying to pulse life into the air—
And was nearly consumed.
The man lowered his hand. His voice was quiet, but it echoed in Aero's chest like a scream.
"Child of the First… the Forgotten Court welcomes you."
Aero stared.
"You're one of them."
The man smiled.
"No. I am one of you."
He vanished in a blink—teleporting through flame—and reappeared at the edge of the cliff, where the castle floated like a dark sun.
His voice boomed one last time across the canyon.
"Come. Or we will come for you."
The chains retracted. The fortress rose.
And the Ashborn all collapsed at once—lifeless again.
Aero stood in the ashstorm, shaking.
"Why me?"
Kaeli walked up beside him, silent.
"Because you're not just the last Valaryn," she said.
"You're the key to waking the rest."