The world burned quietly.
Ash fell like snow, veiling the Market's distant glow. Kael walked through the ruins, his shadow bending unnaturally, stretching long beneath the fractured moons. Behind him, the Soul Market lay silent — a grave for the memories he could not bury.
Each step crunched against broken glass and bone. The wind whispered his name, not as prayer but as accusation. Kael… Kael… Kael…
He ignored it. He had long learned that the dead were persistent storytellers.
The blade at his side still smoked faintly, its embers fading. Every soul he had struck back there — every scream — clung to him like soot. Their cries echoed faintly beneath his ribs, thrumming like a second heartbeat. He did not weep; he never could anymore.
Yet beneath the numbness, something human still ached.
He stopped atop a shattered stairway, overlooking what once had been the northern walls of Kareth. Beyond them, blackened hills rolled beneath the dying sky. No stars dared shine there. Only the faint, red pulse of the Citadel far in the distance — a reminder that the silence he left behind still watched him.
A whisper curled around his ear.
You cannot save what is already ash.
Kael turned. No one stood there — only shadows, rippling like water. He had begun to see them more clearly now — souls untethered, drawn to his flame like moths to a dying candle. They followed in silence, countless, faceless. Some crouched among the ruins, others floated like faint smoke, their hollow eyes fixed on him.
They did not attack. They only watched.
Kael's voice, hoarse and tired, broke the stillness.
"Why do you follow me?"
No answer — only the rustle of dust shifting across stone. But he felt it: a pull in his chest, a soft resonance between his soul and theirs. He had consumed too many. They recognized their own echoes within him.
He looked down at his hands.
Fire, memory, damnation — all wearing the same skin.
He moved again, and they followed. The night deepened around them, the path winding through charred streets and hollow houses. Statues of forgotten saints stared with eyeless faces, their stone hands raised in gestures of mercy long since meaningless.
At the edge of the city, Kael paused by a crumbling fountain. The water was black, thick with ash. He knelt beside it, tracing a finger through the sludge, seeing his reflection — pale, distant, eyes burning faintly like dying stars.
And then another reflection joined his.
Behind him, a child stood — or what once had been one. Skin translucent, body flickering with faint light. The child tilted his head.
"Are you… him?"
Kael didn't turn. "Who do you think I am?"
The child hesitated. "The man who eats the silence. Mama said you walk between heaven and hell."
Kael closed his eyes briefly. "Your mother was wise."
The boy took a small step forward, the air around him humming faintly. "She's gone now. Everyone's gone."
"I know."
The boy frowned, small fingers curling around the edge of the fountain. "Will you make it stop?"
Kael's breath caught. Stop what? The dying? The remembering? Himself? He didn't answer. Instead, he reached out and touched the boy's shoulder. His hand passed through light — a brief warmth, a flicker of something real — before the child dissolved into dust, carried away by the wind.
The silence after was unbearable.
Kael stood, wiping the soot from his palms. "Not yet," he whispered. "I can't make it stop yet."
He turned north again, following the faint outline of the mountains beyond the ruins. The souls trailed him like a procession of ghosts, silent but ever-present. Occasionally, one would drift too close, and his skin would burn — the curse within him hungering for more. He resisted. Barely.
The night stretched on endlessly. The horizon shimmered with faint light — not dawn, but fire. Kael narrowed his eyes. Somewhere ahead, something alive burned.
He quickened his pace.
After a time, he reached the edge of the northern plains — vast, wind-carved wastelands scattered with bones and broken wagons. In the distance, he saw torches. Flickering orange against the dark. Voices carried faintly through the wind — human voices.
He slowed, pulling his cloak tighter. The souls behind him receded into the mist, unwilling to follow further. Whatever lay ahead was not theirs to haunt.
Kael approached quietly. The smell of smoke and iron filled the air — and something else beneath it: blood.
At the center of a ruined camp, a dozen figures knelt in a circle, their bodies half-burned, their chests carved with runes of ash. A symbol — a shard within a circle — was branded into the ground beside them.
He recognized it instantly.
The Shardborn.
Once human, now zealots forged from pain and belief. The living resistance, born from those who refused to sell their souls — yet worshipped death as a means of freedom. They spoke of Kael as both curse and salvation.
One of the bodies stirred. A woman, her face hidden beneath a cracked mask of soot. Her voice rasped, broken by pain.
"Firewalker…"
Kael froze.
Her eyes glowed faintly as she looked up at him. "We waited… for you…"
He knelt beside her, wary. "Why?"
She coughed, blood staining her lips. "Because you are the end. And every end must begin again."
Her hand trembled as she reached for him — not pleading, but offering. In her palm, a fragment of black crystal pulsed weakly. He recognized it — a soul shard, carved from the Citadel itself.
"Take it," she whispered. "It will lead you to the Ember Throne. To where the gods once burned."
Kael hesitated, then closed his fingers around the shard. It was cold — colder than death — yet deep within it, something stirred. He heard faint laughter. A voice he hadn't heard since before the world fell.
Mira.
His grip tightened.
The woman's last breath escaped as a sigh. Her body dissolved into ash, scattering with the wind.
Kael stood once more beneath the blood-red sky, the shard glowing faintly in his hand. The souls behind him began to stir again, whispering in tones he couldn't quite understand.
He looked north. The horizon flickered — faint, golden, alive. The Ember Throne awaited.
For the first time in what felt like centuries, Kael smiled — but it wasn't warmth that touched his lips. It was hunger.
If the gods won't return, he thought, then I will burn the heavens myself.
The wind rose, scattering ash and embers into the endless dark.
The souls followed.
And behind them, unseen, the Market's monolith cracked again — a second fracture, spreading like fire through the foundation of the dead world.
The balance had begun to break.
The night was silent, yet it bled.
Ash drifted from the broken spires, falling like black snow over Kael's hands. The souls he had consumed whispered faintly — a thousand voices crying to be remembered, or perhaps warning him that he already wasn't.
Mira stood behind him, her silhouette trembling in the dying firelight. "Kael… how much more will it take before you can't feel anymore?"
He didn't answer. He couldn't. The embers at his feet flared briefly — and for a moment, the reflection in his eyes wasn't his own. It was something older. Something that watched the world not with grief, but hunger.
Far above, a crimson moon broke through the clouds. Its light caressed the ruins like a wound reopening.
And as Kael turned away, the souls followed — whispering his name, not as savior, but as prophecy.