The wind had shifted.

Lyra felt it before she heard the bells.
Not church bells. Not iron bells.
These were deeper—like bones clanging in a hollow grave.

Auren stood still, hand resting lightly on the scale from the fallen dragonkin.
The glow it had carried now flickered erratically—like a candle sensing a storm.

“Something’s near,” he muttered.

The trees bent as if something unseen passed through them.
The sky dimmed. The clouds above turned a shade too gray.
The world felt... watched.

He stepped into the clearing where the Flamewing had died.

And there—he saw it.

Tall. Armored. Cloaked in spectral light.

A humanoid figure, but not quite human. Its face was hidden beneath a silver mask shaped like a weeping saint. Its robes bore the insignia of three intertwined scales—the Tribunal’s seal.

In one hand, it held a staff made of blackened bone and gold. In the other—nothing. Yet the air around its fingers hissed with invisible power.

It spoke.

|“Auren of the Flame-Touched Soul.
 You have carried the fragment of a sealed one.
 By order of the Grand Tribunal, you are to be purified.”|

Auren didn’t flinch. “You speak of justice while wearing the robes of a butcher.”

The Executioner tilted its head, voice hollow and serene. “Justice is the blade that severs rot from flesh. You are no longer judged worthy of rebirth.”

A pulse rippled from the staff.
The trees disintegrated.
Lyra gasped and backed away.

Auren stepped forward.

“I was given this life not by you, but by the divine. You—are a mistake born of stolen law.”

The Executioner raised its hand.
The staff pointed at the sky.

“Judgment begins.”

The clearing erupted in white fire.

Runes scorched the ground in a perfect circle—binding sigils.
Lyra was thrown back. Screaming.

Auren stood inside the inferno.
His cloak caught flame—but did not burn.
His sword—drawn in a heartbeat—glowed not gold, but deep crimson.

He closed his eyes.

|“You want purity?”
 “Then face the weight of karma you’ve forgotten.”|

He moved.

The fight was blinding.

Blades of spirit clashed with divine steel.
Auren’s sword—the Willbrand—cut through the Executioner’s binding circles.

But the being fought without hesitation, without emotion.
Every strike calculated. Every move, surgical.
This was not a man. It was a verdict made flesh.

Auren faltered once.

A blow struck his side—cracked ribs.

He dropped to a knee.

The Executioner raised its staff for the final blow.

|“Soul: unworthy.
 Verdict: eternal silence.”|

Then—

The scale in Auren’s pocket burned.

Auren screamed—not in pain, but fury.
His aura exploded outward.

| “I was judged once.
  I was damned once.
 I won’t kneel again.” |

His sword blazed to full golden fire.

He rose—faster than thought.

“Soul Purification: Judged Not By You!”

He struck.

The fire became a blade.
The blade became law.
The law unmade the Tribunal's puppet.

The Executioner shattered—runes cracking, soul dispersing into screams.

Silence returned to the clearing.

Auren dropped to one knee. Breathing hard.
The Willbrand hummed.

Lyra ran to him. “What was that?”

He looked at the ashes left behind. A single feather of light remained.

“An echo of what I used to be,” he said.
“And a warning.
They’re not waiting anymore.
They’re coming.”

“The sword remembers sins long buried.
And when the gavel fails,
flame becomes the verdict.”
                            — Scripture of the Forsaken Trial