The Ashborn broke their circle.

No signal, no sound — just sudden, terrible motion. They surged from the trees in jerks and lunges, limbs stiff but fast, ember eyes burning like coals in a wind. The forest gasped with them; glowing boughs dimmed as though recoiling, and the motes of light scattered like startled birds.

Rael moved first.

Rael: The Flame-forged Discipline

Flame-Edge roared into fire as his hand tightened on the hilt, the crystal blade shining like a shard of sun itself. His stance was steady, shoulders squared, feet planted. He fought like a fortress come alive.

The first Ashborn lunged — too tall, too thin, arms stretching unnaturally far. Rael met it with a clean, economical strike, severing both limbs in one sweep. The creature collapsed in silence, its body breaking into dust before the blade even cooled.

Another came low, crawling like a spider. Rael pivoted, not with haste but with precision, Flame-Edge arcing down through the creature’s skull. He did not grunt, did not waste breath. His style was not storm nor fury — it was inevitability.

Every strike was measured. Every movement chosen.

Lakvenor had once teased him for being too rigid, too restrained. But Rael knew the truth: a blade that flailed was a blade that failed. His every cut carried the weight of Solara’s discipline, of a prince raised beneath the gaze of the Celestial Phoenix.

“Hold your ground!” His voice carried through the chaos, steady, unyielding. “Let them break against us like waves on stone!”

Lakvenor: The Storm Unbound

Where Rael was stone, Lakvenor was storm.

He spun his twin-bladed staff in sweeping arcs, lightning crackling along its length. Each motion was reckless and alive, a dance between fury and joy. He met the Ashborn not with measured precision, but with overwhelming disruption — scattering them like dry leaves before a gale.

He darted forward, staff striking the ground. Thunder split the forest floor, bolts leaping from blade-tip to ashen limb. The Ashborn jerked as currents tore through them, ember-eyes flashing before their bodies crumbled into drifting soot.

One lunged at his flank. Lakvenor whirled, laughing sharp and breathless, sparks spitting from his staff as he parried and countered in one movement.

“You don’t like a little storm, do you?” he barked, his grin half-wild.

His movements carried no discipline, no royal training. Lakvenor was a storm given flesh — unpredictable, relentless, destructive. And yet in that chaos there was brilliance: where Rael’s blade held the line, Lakvenor’s lightning broke it open.

He was the wind that tore at stone until it cracked.

Sira: The Verdant Heart

Sira did not charge. She did not leap nor roar. She stood her ground, staff rooted into the moss, and the earth answered.

Roots burst from the soil, coiling around Ashborn ankles, dragging them down into the moss as though the forest itself had teeth. Vines lashed out in sweeping whips, binding limbs that reached too far, snapping with verdant strength.

Where Rael cut and Lakvenor shattered, Sira restrained. She tamed. She bent the chaos of battle to the will of the living earth.

One Ashborn slipped through, its claws arching toward her throat. She whispered an old word — a fragment of the language her mother, Queen Janara of Mithila, had taught her. The ground heaved, and a wall of flowering bark rose between them, the claws embedding uselessly before the whole wall exploded in a shower of petals and splinters.

Her staff glowed emerald, its runes pulsing with steady rhythm. She moved with grace, but behind her calm lay a tide of power few could fathom.

And in her heart, the Verdant Core stirred.

She had always known she was different. Born of Janara’s blood but marked by secrets the queen had never explained. Since childhood, the earth had listened to her more closely than to others of Mithila. She could heal with a touch, bend saplings with a whisper, coax life where there should have been none.

But it came at a cost. Whispers in the palace halls. Fearful glances. A sense that she was not simply gifted — but created. Forged of soil and spark in ways even she did not yet understand.

Now, as Ashborn crumbled to roots that tore them down, she wondered if her power had not simply been born of Gaia’s grace — but tied to the ash, the ruin, the hunger before her.

The Battle’s Crescendo

The three fought as one: Rael’s precision anchoring, Lakvenor’s storm breaking, Sira’s roots binding.

Ashborn fell — some sliced into drifting dust, some blasted apart in sparks, some strangled until they crumbled into cinders. But still they came. For every two that fell, another stalked from the shadows, ember eyes igniting anew.

The forest grew darker, the glow of its boughs dimming. Ash spread thick in the air, coating Rael’s armor, clinging to Lakvenor’s hair, staining Sira’s robes with gray. Breathing became harder, each inhale filled with the taste of old fire.

Rael’s arms grew heavy, Flame-Edge dimming at the edges. Lakvenor’s lightning faltered, sparks failing to leap as far as before. Sira’s vines began to wither even as they struck, the soil itself seeming to tire.

And then the shard pulsed violently.

The Revelation

The shockwave rippled through the clearing, staggering Ashborn and exiles alike. For a breath, the Ashborn froze, their forms trembling, ember eyes flickering. And then — sound.

A whisper, low at first, then growing as though dozens of voices spoke broken words through shattered throats.

“C—ore… C—ore…”

The battle slowed. The Ashborn pressed forward still, but their eyes burned not with hunger, but with recognition. Their movements shifted, less wild — more deliberate. They were not lashing at Rael. Not at Lakvenor. Their gaze fixed, unyielding, upon Sira.

Rael slashed another down, ash clouding his face. He turned to her, voice sharp. “Sira! Stay with us!”

But she had already stilled, her staff trembling in her hands. She could feel it now — the Verdant Core in her veins aching in resonance. The Ashborn pressed against her mind like wind battering glass. They were not mindless. They were fragments. Memories given form.

Lakvenor snarled, blasting another apart. “They’re still trying to gut us, sister!”

“No,” she whispered, eyes wide. “Not us. Me.”

The shard at her feet blazed with runes, words burning across the moss:

Ash remembers. Ash hungers. Ash kneels.

The Ashborn froze. Then, one by one, they dropped to their knees. Limbs jerking, heads bowed. Not surrender. Not defeat. Supplication.

They knelt before Sira.

And the Glimmerwood itself groaned, branches shuddering as though recoiling from the sight.