Part I – Ashfall
Smoke crawled across the plain like a living thing, thick enough to turn daylight into rust. Leira pressed a rag against her mouth and tasted blood beneath the cloth. The wind was full of ash and the sweet, copper smell of men burning in armor. Around her, what was left of the Great Warriors trudged onward through the wreckage—fewer than a hundred where once ten thousand had stood. Their banners were gone. Only the sound of boots crushing cinders marked that they still existed.
The mountain waited ahead, a black fang stabbing the sky. From its broken crown poured firelight, pulsing like a heart. Every beat throbbed through the ground and up Leira's legs until her bones ached.
"Keep them moving," she said. Her voice was ragged, dry from heat. "If they stop, they'll remember what fear is."
Ariel walked beside her, smaller by little else. The scales that streaked her neck caught the dull glow and shimmered like old coins. She smiled—a ghost of the grin she'd worn in easier days—and said, "They don't need reminding, sister. They can smell the god from here."
Leira almost laughed. Almost. The air was too heavy for humor. She adjusted the strap on her sword and stared at her hand. The veins there glowed faintly red under the skin, pulsing to the same rhythm as the mountain. Every pulse hurt. The dragon blood was awake again.
–––
Thunder rolled across the plain—not from the clouds, but from the earth. Cracks split the ground, spilling molten rock. A fallen knight screamed as his leg vanished into fire. Leira grabbed his arm, tried to pull him free, but the heat peeled skin from both their hands. She let go. The scream ended quick.
"Leira," Ariel whispered. "It's starting."
"I know."
They moved faster. The warriors followed, silent now, faces gray with ash. Among them walked men and women of every kind—humans with broken swords, elves with burnt staves, a lone fairy whose wings had melted to black ribbons. They looked less like an army than survivors of a dream gone bad. Yet they followed the sisters because there was nothing else left to follow.
At the foot of the mountain stood what remained of a fortress—stone bones jutting from slag. Leira could still see the carvings half-melted into the gate: dragons entwined, mouths open in song. Their eyes had been gems once. Now they were holes.
Ariel touched one of the stones. It was warm, almost breathing. "He's right beneath us," she said. "Can you feel it?"
Leira nodded. "I feel nothing else."
–––
Inside the ruined gate, the heat was worse. The air shimmered, bending the world like glass over flame. The tunnel sloped downward into red light. The warriors hesitated.
"Go," Leira told them. "This ends today."
No one moved. Then a soldier—a man missing one arm—took a step. Another followed. Soon the line was moving again, into the mountain's throat. Their shadows twisted on the walls, long and monstrous. The smell of sulfur thickened. Every breath tasted of coins and old smoke.
Halfway down, Ariel stumbled. Leira caught her. Her sister's eyes glowed faintly, pupils slitted like a cat's.
"You're burning too fast," Leira said.
"I'm fine."
"You're not. When the fire takes your eyes, it takes your mind next."
Ariel laughed softly. "Then hurry, before I go mad."
Leira helped her stand. The tunnel widened into a cavern vast enough to hold a city. Rivers of magma carved paths between obsidian pillars. At the far end rose the altar—the seal. It was a circle of ancient stone inscribed with sigils that bled light, and at its center hung Kareth's chains: links of black metal thicker than trees, trembling as if something immense breathed beneath them.
–––
Leira felt her knees weaken. She remembered the first time they'd seen those chains, years ago when the war began. They'd thought them unbreakable.
A sound crawled through the air—low, rhythmic, like a whisper inside the bones. Words formed within it, not heard but felt: children of flame… you were mine before you were gods…
Ariel shivered. "He's speaking again."
Leira drew her sword. The blade's edge shimmered with faint light. "Then let him hear us answer."
The warriors spread across the ledge behind them, forming a circle. Each raised their weapon or hand or prayer. The sigils on the floor flared brighter. Kareth's voice grew louder, deeper, almost gentle: End this war. Rest. I will give you peace.
Ariel's breath hitched. For a heartbeat her eyes went vacant, as if something inside her was listening.
Leira grabbed her shoulder. "Don't. Don't let him in."
Ariel blinked, refocused. "He sounds like Father."
"He sounds like what he steals."
The chains shuddered. Sparks of shadow bled upward, forming half-shapes—wings, claws, a skull that wasn't one shape but many layered over each other. The cavern roared with the heat of it. Stone began to melt.
Leira turned to the soldiers. "You know the cost," she said.
One by one they nodded. None spoke.
Ariel's voice was barely a whisper. "If we win, no one will remember us."
Leira forced a smile. "That's the only way peace ever stays."
–––
She stepped onto the altar. The light beneath her feet turned gold, then white. Fire rose along her arms, devouring cloth, flesh, memory. She felt Ariel's hand find hers, their fingers locking together as they had when they were children hiding from storms.
The last thing she saw before the world turned white was the face of her sister—calm, eyes full of light—and the reflection of her own fear burning in them.
Then the mountain screamed.
Stone folded inward like paper. Rivers of molten rock convulsed, tearing open new veins of light. Leira's ears rang until all sound became a single sharp note that seemed to come from inside her skull. The fire struck back, running up her arms in a wave that emptied her lungs. For a heartbeat she thought she saw Kareth's face in the glare—eyes as wide as horizons, a mouth made of night.
Then everything went white.
–––
Heat filled the universe, but it didn't burn anymore. It pressed instead, a great weight on her chest, a gravity that drew everything toward the mountain's heart. She felt the pull on her bones, her blood, her name.
The pressure broke. Silence poured in.
Dust drifted like glass snowflakes. The glow faded to a slow red pulse somewhere deep beneath her. Leira opened her eyes and saw the world through a haze of settling ash. The air was thicker, quieter; the kind of quiet that followed a scream too long held. Her sword lay beside her, twisted into a spiral of black metal. She reached for it, then stopped. It was over.
Or it should have been.
Beneath the silence she heard it: one heartbeat, deep and heavy, shaking the air inside her chest as if the mountain itself still breathed.
She turned toward the sound. The altar was gone, but the chains remained, fused into the rock. Their links glowed red, like veins under flesh, and in their center something moved—slow, rhythmic, not dead.
Ariel stirred beside her, voice a whisper of smoke. "Still here?"
Leira nodded, her throat raw. "So is he."