It should have been a battlefield.Kael had led the scouts across the northern vale for three days, bracing for resistance at every bend. Thornebridge wasn’t just another city. It was the heart of the region—a junction where three rivers met and every surviving trade route tangled like roots in the earth. Whoever held Thornebridge controlled the future of the realm.They had been warned: the Dustborn might have gotten there first.But they hadn't.No banners flew. No gates stood. No sentries patrolled the walls.Just stillness. And smoke.Seren reined in her steed at the shattered edge of what had once been the city gate.Mourne dismounted beside her, eyes scanning the skyline, hand unconsciously hovering near the hilt of his blade.Kael had already entered.He met Seren with a single, grim look.She didn’t ask what he saw. She could already feel it.She walked past him, into silence and cinder.The city was gone.Not captured. Not sieged.Burned.Every home had collapsed inward, cons
Ash did not fall.It rose.From the earth, from forgotten ruins, from the mouths of those who had dared whisper her name in shadowed corners and candlelit prayers. Sirelia. The name once uttered with fear and reverence, now chanted like a drumbeat echoing across red deserts and shattered cities. Her return was no cataclysm. It did not arrive on the back of thunder. It came cloaked in silence, heavier than the storm.And then came the footsteps.A thousand at first.Then ten thousand.Then more.They did not breathe. They did not bleed. They did not hope.These were not soldiers. Not truly.They were remnants. Revenants.A tide of bone-bound warriors, raised not from life but from oath and grief, stitched together by threads of dust and ancient, defiant magic. Their forms were sculpted from the broken earth and the memories of those history had erased. In their hollow chests echoed the names of queens cast down too soon, of children whose prayers went unanswered, of revolutions quelled
There are places the world forgets.Not because they are unimportant, but because they remember too much.The Temple of Moonroot was one of those places.Long abandoned. Half-buried by ivy.Hidden in a gorge carved by a dying river. It had once been a place where queens laid down their blades and begged the stars for peace.Now it held only dust.And Seren.She came alone.No guards.No wolves.No fire.Just the hum of the earth beneath her feet and the quiet question that had followed her since the first city burned:Am I becoming her?The wind here didn’t sing.It watched.She stepped over the threshold and into the shadow.The altar was cracked.The runes long faded.And at the centre, where old ash still clung to the stone, stood a figure.Not fully formed.Not quite alive.Not quite dead.Elara.She wore no crown.Only the scars of too many wars and the silence of too many regrets.Her hair was wind-tangled, her dress scorched at the hem.Her eyes, Seren’s eyes.Seren stopped.Di
Maps used to mean order.Borders, names, bloodlines.They were drawn in ink and sealed with treaties signed by kings and queens who pretended their reigns would last forever.But maps had no place in this war.Because this was a war of belief.Of memory.Of who deserved to rebuild what had always been broken.And belief bled faster than empires.The Ashwake’s decree had crossed the mountains by the second sunrise.By the third, six minor holds had burned their royal seals and declared allegiance not to Emberfall, not to a crown, but to the flame that knelt to no one.By the fourth, the capital of Brightmere, the last bastion of Elara’s still-loyal houses, was under siege.Not from Seren.From its people.Kael watched the map burn.Literally.A portion of it had been laid out in the Emberfall war tent, pinned with markers denoting allies, threats, and unknowns.Now, parts of it caught fire where flame-bonded cities had turned.Kael didn’t stop it.He let it burn.Mourne stood beside hi
The world did not turn the day Seren spoke.It cracked.A message had been carved in fire across the ridge overlooking Crescent Vale. One word, visible for miles. Burned into the mountain itself.Rise.And those who read it did not misunderstand.It was not a call to arms.It was a warning.Emberfall was still in the hour before dawn.The camp had been quiet since the revelation of Vessa’s blood.There had been no executions.No celebrations.Only silence.And waiting.The Ashborn stood in rows before the central flame, heads bowed, weapons at their sides, not for war, but for witness.Wolves paced the perimeter, growling in patterns that even the wind seemed to heed.At the centre, atop the altar once used to bless warbands, stood Seren.Uncrowned.Unarmed.And no longer uncertain.Her cloak fluttered in the rising heat.Behind her, Kael, Mourne, and Vessa stood watch.Before her, a scribe knelt with a scroll, ink brush trembling."Are you ready?" the scribe asked.Seren looked to th
Vessa never imagined it would end like this.Not with blood soaking into the earth.Not with a blade trembling in her grip.Not with the weight of a hundred eyes upon her.But betrayal doesn’t wait for permission.And truth never waits for the right moment.It began with the scout.He stumbled into Emberfall camp just as the first light broke over the horizon, his tunic soaked with blood, his steps faltering. The birds had not yet begun to sing, and the air still clung to the night’s chill.A blade protruded from his side, its hilt bearing a sigil unfamiliar to most—but not to Vessa.A Dustborn fang, unmistakable in its cruel elegance. Curved like a crescent moon, laced with runes meant to cause pain, not just death.With a final, ragged breath, he uttered two words:"They knew."He collapsed, the firelight casting flickering shadows over his still body.Seren was summoned from the ruins within moments.Kael stood over the scout's lifeless body, his expression unreadable. He was alway