The crystal throne room emptied like a wound bleeding silence.

Rael stood alone at the dais long after voices had faded, the echoes of accusation still clinging to the air. The vision Calithra had conjured burned in his mind: him, crowned in fire, leading Ayara into ruin.

A lie. Or worse, a truth.

Sira touched his arm gently. “Do not carry their fear as your own,” she said, though her tone betrayed unease. The bond between them still hummed from the Rite, pulling her feelings close to his own.

Lakvenor, less subtle, spat onto the marble floor. “By the storm, I’ll carve that snake-tongue in two. Calithra plays them all, and Father listens like a blind man at market.”

Rael forced calm. “We do not answer venom with venom. That is what she wants. Division.”

But even as he spoke, he felt it — the widening gulf in the court, cracks like fault lines running through Solara. And in those cracks, Calithra poured poison.

By evening, summons came not to a feast but to council.

The king sat in shadow, his crown dim in the candlelight. Advisors whispered around him, each voice a chain dragging the throne deeper into doubt. Rael spoke of unity, of vigilance against Shadowspire, but their eyes slid from him as if his words carried heat too dangerous to bear.

When the council dissolved, Calithra lingered at the king’s side, her hand light upon the throne’s armrest. Rael caught her gaze once more. This time she smiled.

It was not triumph. It was prophecy fulfilled.

They left the palace at dawn. Not in exile, not yet — but in pretense of “diplomatic journey.” A gesture, the king said, to show goodwill to the lesser realms. But Rael knew truth when he tasted it. He was being moved from the board, before fire consumed the game.

Lakvenor muttered oaths the whole way down the mountain path, storm-staff crackling with sparks. Sira walked in silence, but the earth seemed to stir at her steps, roots shifting under the soil as though restless on her behalf.

And then, as the mountains gave way to scarred plains, they saw it.

The Ashlands.

Once, this had been a kingdom. Fields of harvest, temples of light, cities whose spires reached the heavens. All gone now.

The Great Collapse had swept through a century ago, leaving not ruin but wounds. Stone melted into glass. Towers bent like wax in a fire. Streets ended in chasms that belched pale smoke.

And the statues — gods, heroes, kings — all half-consumed, faces erased, as if memory itself had burned.

The air was thick with dust that stung the eyes and clung to the throat. With every step, flakes of ash drifted from the bones of the earth, rising and falling like gray snow.

Lakvenor wrinkled his nose. “By the storm, it stinks of death.”

Sira knelt, pressing her hand to the soil. A faint green glow spread from her touch, but it faltered almost at once. She drew back sharply, eyes dark. “Nothing lives here. Nothing wants to live.”

Rael stared at the ruins. He felt the weight of silence, deeper than any battlefield he had ever seen. “This is what prophecy warns of,” he said softly. “Not fire alone. Emptiness. A world undone.”

As night fell, they camped among the shattered columns of what might once have been a temple. Moonlight cut across the broken stone, catching faint runes that glimmered weakly in protest of time.

Lakvenor tossed a pebble that skittered across the floor. “So. Ashborn. Tell me again what they are, brother.”

Rael frowned. “Remnants. Shadows given hunger. When the Collapse shattered laws of flesh and spirit, some souls refused to pass. They clung. They became ash and memory, bound to ruin. They wander, seeking heat to replace what was lost.”

Sira added softly, “And they hunt in silence.”

The wind shifted. The campfire guttered. And in the distance, shapes moved — tall, thin, their outlines wreathed in drifting cinders. Eyes glowed faintly, like coals in the dark.

Lakvenor swore, drawing his staff. Lightning flared at the tips. “And of course, we find them.”

Rael rose, Flame-Edge sliding free, its crystal blade catching the firelight. He felt the weight of prophecy pressing close. Was this, too, inevitable? That even ash itself would rise to greet him?

The first Ashborn stepped into the ruin’s light. Its mouth opened, and no sound came — only the rush of falling ash, pouring endlessly into the night.

Rael tightened his grip.

Exile or not, prophecy or not — he would not let shadow take them here.