The ashstorm had thinned by morning, but the silence was worse than the storm.
Kael moved through the skeletal streets, his wounds stiff but closing under the forge's restless heat. Every step felt like walking through the hollow chest of some ancient titan, ribs of stone and steel curving overhead.
But the city was not empty.
He felt it before he saw it—eyes in the rubble, movements just beyond sight. Scavengers that had once fled at his presence now lingered in the shadows, their pale forms watching with unnatural stillness.
The forge whispered, urging him to take them, to feed. But something in their posture froze him. They were not hunting. They were waiting.
A broken tower groaned above him, its bones of metal vibrating with a faint hum. Kael stopped, tilting his head. The sound was not the wind. It was a pulse, steady and deep, spreading through the ruins.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The rhythm traveled through stone and steel, like a heart waking after centuries of death.
Kael's hand tightened on the hilt of his stolen blade. "What… is this?"
Then came the whispers.
Not from the forge inside him, but from the ash itself. Words he could not understand, hissing across the ruins in voices layered and overlapping. The scavengers turned their heads in unison toward the horizon, their eyeless faces trembling.
Kael followed their gaze.
Far to the east, where the horizon bled into the sky, the ash boiled upward. A faint glow bled through the stormclouds, not the color of sun or moon, but of fire chained and burning.
The pulse quickened.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Every scavenger in sight collapsed into the dust, writhing as though their strings had been pulled. Some disintegrated outright, their bodies unraveling into motes that fled into the air.
Kael staggered back, the forge thrashing inside his chest, heat spilling into his veins. His shadow wings flared unbidden, instinct clawing to the surface.
The horizon grew brighter, the glow sharpening into pillars of fire that clawed into the sky.
The Flamebearers were coming.
Kael gritted his teeth, forcing the forge down, his breath harsh. The mysterious woman's words echoed in him: If you remain what you are now, you will die.
The city was waking, its bones trembling, its dead stirring under the weight of their approach.
And Kael, caught between hunger and fear, whispered into the ash:
"Let them try."