The battlefield was quiet now. Sand and ash coated the horizon, the skeletal army already crumbling to dust. Only the summoner remained, crumpled on his knees, his broken staff lying in shards beside him.
Lucien's blade pressed faintly against his throat. "Speak. Why is this land hollow?"
The man coughed, blood bubbling at his lips, but his eyes still gleamed with madness. "Hollow? No… this land breathes. It remembers."
Kairo grabbed him by the collar, dragging him upright. "Then explain why we only see corpses and sand."
The summoner chuckled, a rasp like stone grinding. "Because it was consumed… by one of yours."
Ashveil's smirk faltered for the first time since they met him. "One of ours?" His voice sharpened, the arrogance edged with something colder.
"Yes," the summoner croaked. "This desert was once a thriving kingdom. Gardens. Rivers. Temples that reached into the clouds. Then he came… a Revenant draped in fire and shadow. He burned the heart of the land dry, and in the ashes, he left me—his warden, his proof. I gather the bones so that the world never forgets what happens when his hunger awakens."
Lucien narrowed his eyes. "Which Revenant?"
The summoner's cracked lips twisted upward. "Infernal Ashveil."
Silence fell like a blade.
Kairo's grip tightened on his weapon, his eyes darting immediately toward the cloaked figure at his side. Ashveil, however, remained perfectly still—only his smile was gone, replaced by an expression Lucien couldn't read.
Lucien's blade didn't move. His voice was low, each word deliberate. "Infernal Ashveil?"
The summoner wheezed, fighting to breathe. "The title of the one who devoured this kingdom. The name carved into the bones of the dead. He promised he would return when the land's heart beats again…"
Then, with a sudden burst of manic laughter, the summoner thrust out his arm and clawed at Lucien's chest—not with strength, but with a brand burned into his skin. Strange symbols flared across his arm, void-forged script twisting unnaturally.
Lucien's cloak flared without wind, his blade piercing the man through before the symbols could take root. The summoner slumped, dead at last, his body dissolving into dust.
But the words remained. Infernal Ashveil.
Kairo turned sharply, weapon half-raised. "Lucien—"
Ashveil's cloak unfurled, his silhouette bathed in shadow against the wasteland. He didn't look at them. Instead, his gaze stretched to the horizon, where the wind carried ash across the empty sands.
Finally, he spoke, voice heavy with something dangerous.
"…That name doesn't belong to me."
He turned, and for the first time, the confident arrogance in his expression cracked, revealing something colder, older—like a mask slipping for only a heartbeat.
"But it belonged to my brother."
The desert wind howled, and the sands shifted violently as if the earth itself shuddered at the name.
Lucien felt it in his bones—the faint pull of the void, resonating like a warning bell. A Revenant they hadn't met yet. One bound not only to Ashveil, but to the death of kingdoms.