The rift closed behind Raikuro with a whisper, not a roar. There was no ground beneath him, only fractured echoes of moments long dead. The space was not a place—it was remembrance shaped into torment.

Before him, the Throne of Silence loomed, built from the vertebrae of forgotten gods. Seated atop it was Dreadvorr, swathed in tendrils of memory and god-blood, his form shifting between faces Raikuro half-recognized—kings, monsters, even his own.

Suspended above the throne was Lysia, her spirit chained in runes of burning light, her mouth open in a silent scream.

Raikuro took a step forward. The Hellsteel pulsed in his grip; in his other hand, the heart beat like a war drum. Its pulses were not rhythmic—they commanded.

“You carry the First Flame,” Dreadvorr said. His voice was more than one—it was a choir of stolen identities. “You were not meant to hold it. You were meant to be it.”

Raikuro raised the Hellsteel. “Then why do you look afraid?”

The rift twisted, reality folding inward. The duel had no stage, no crowd. Only will and memory defined its limits.

Dreadvorr struck first. A blade of shrieking light, forged from the regrets of a thousand timelines, sliced toward Raikuro. He met it head-on. The Hellsteel didn’t deflect—it devoured, drawing strength from every wound it had ever caused.

They clashed—again, and again.

With each strike, fragments of the past bled into the air. Raikuro saw himself as a child, clutching a wooden sword. He saw Lysia’s smile on their wedding day. He saw his hands stained with blood—friend and foe alike.

“You cannot defeat me,” Dreadvorr growled, shifting forms mid-lunge—from warlock to father to flame. “I am the weight of everything you abandoned.”

“I carry that weight,” Raikuro said, eyes burning. “But I don’t become it.”

He slashed, and the Hellsteel screamed—an ancient, final cry. The blade cut through illusion, through fear. Dreadvorr staggered, wounded for the first time.

The heart pulsed again.

Raikuro faltered. Visions swarmed his senses—Lysia’s death, Ogrhul’s oath, the broken gods begging for rebirth. The heart was tearing his soul into pieces to keep him standing.

Dreadvorr grinned. “You begin to see. The heart is no weapon. It is a door.”

The chains on Lysia began to unravel. Her eyes, long empty, found his.

“Raikuro...” she whispered.

He dropped to one knee, choking on the weight of the heart.

“You are not strong enough,” Dreadvorr sneered, summoning a spear of crystallized memory. “Let the world forget. Let it all burn.”

Then Raikuro did the one thing no warlock, god, or demon expected.

He plunged the heart into his own chest.

There was no scream. No explosion.

There was only light.

Epilogue: Embers

Ogrhul stood beside the Flamekeeper at the edge of the now-still cavern. The rift had closed, sealing behind a silence that shook the soul.

“No sign?” Ogrhul asked.

The Flamekeeper closed her eyes. “He did not kill Dreadvorr. He replaced him.”

A single ember drifted down from the air and settled in Ogrhul’s palm. It pulsed once—like a heartbeat.

“He chose memory over destruction,” she said. “He made himself the seal.”

From the ashes at the center of the hollow, a figure emerged. Not Raikuro. Not Dreadvorr. Something between—a shape of flame and resolve, his face aglow with sorrow and clarity.

He looked at the Hellsteel lying in the dust. Then turned away.

The blade remained. Still.

Unneeded.

And above, the broken sky stitched itself closed.

The world would remember him not as a hero, or a weapon, or a god.

But as a choice.