A year had passed since the Golden Dawn.
Future Pride — once a city of smoke and sorrow — now stood reborn. The scars of the plasma storm had not been erased, but woven into the new skyline like veins of light. Every tower shimmered with energy harvested safely from the purified core — Ignis's final gift.
The people no longer looked to the sky in fear. They looked up... and smiled.
Children raced through the streets wearing phoenix emblems on their jackets, laughing as their homemade wings caught the wind. Street artists painted murals of a man wrapped in golden fire, his eyes calm, his hand outstretched toward the horizon. Under every mural were the same three words:
"Hope. Flame. Forever."
The heroes who had once been divided by greed and fame now stood united — rebuilding not as icons, but as protectors. They called themselves the Order of the Ember, each sworn to uphold the same creed Ignis lived by:
"To burn not for glory, but for others."
And at the heart of the city, on the very plaza where the plasma storm had once torn reality apart, stood a memorial — a massive phoenix sculpted from molten glass and alloy, its wings spread in eternal flight. Beneath it burned an eternal golden flame, fueled by pure energy that never dimmed.
The crowd gathered that evening under a sky painted orange and violet — the colors of Ignis's final storm.
Saurabh, now walking with a brace from his old wounds, stood at the podium. His voice was steady, but his eyes shimmered with memory.
He looked out over the people — millions of them — faces glowing in the warm light of the eternal flame.
"He didn't save us because he could," Saurabh said softly.
"He saved us because he cared."
Silence followed — the kind of silence that doesn't wound, but heals.
The crowd bowed their heads. Some wept. Some smiled.
Above them, the golden flame flickered brighter, as if responding to their hearts.
Then — just for a moment — a shift in the air.
A warm breeze swept through the plaza. The torches swayed. The sky shimmered faintly with light. High among the drifting clouds, a faint golden flame appeared — soft, pulsing, alive.
Gasps rose from the crowd. Children pointed upward.
For a heartbeat, the city glowed again.
Saurabh looked to the heavens, his lips curving into a faint smile.
He whispered to the wind,
"You kept your promise, brother."
The flame drifted higher, merging with the sunlight breaking through the clouds. The sky itself seemed to breathe — warm, alive, eternal.
And in that golden light, the people of Future Pride felt it — not grief, not loss, but continuation.
Because legends don't end.
They evolve.
They pass from one hand, one heart, one spark... to another.
Far beyond the horizon, where the light met the stars, something stirred — a heartbeat, faint but real.
A whisper of flame.
A promise rekindled.
IGNIS lives.
(This is not the end... this is the beginning.)