Darkness held him.

Heavy. Breathless. Cold.

He couldn’t tell if he was still alive.

All he knew was the sound — a low hum that echoed through the emptiness, vibrating in his bones like a heartbeat that wasn’t his own.

"Do you remember, little flame… what you wished for that night?”

Eiden’s eyes snapped open.

The world was wrong.

He wasn’t in the village anymore.

He floated in a vast space filled with drifting embers, each one glowing faintly — like stars trapped beneath an ocean.

He tried to move, but his limbs felt weightless. His body shimmered, breaking apart into faint lines of gold and shadow.

“Where… am I?”

“Between breath and silence,” the voice said — neither male nor female, but layered, like a thousand whispers forming one sound.

“The border between what dies… and what refuses to.”

Eiden turned.

In the distance, he saw something — a figure, immense and fractured, kneeling amid the ashes. Its wings were made of broken glass, and light leaked through the cracks like molten gold.

It wasn’t alive.

But it wasn’t dead either.

“You bear my spark,” the being said. “And yet you do not remember me.”

Eiden’s heart pounded. “You’re the one who— back there—”

“When you reached for the dying man,” it said softly. “You called upon what sleeps inside you. The Lumenflame.”

Eiden’s breath caught. The word felt familiar, ancient — as if it had lived in his veins all along.

He reached for the light around him, but it burned his skin like frostbite.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Intent does not matter,” the being said. “Power answers the heart, not the mind.”

“And your heart… still mourns.”

The embers around them pulsed like beating hearts. One by one, they dimmed — fading into the void.

Eiden swallowed. “The others… Mira— my village—”

"Gone,” the voice whispered. “The Harvesters have taken what remains. You, they failed to claim.”

The words struck like cold knives.

He clenched his fists. “Then send me back. I’ll—”

“You cannot yet bear it. The flame you hold burns brighter than your soul can endure. If you awaken it fully now, you will cease to be human.”

The being’s head tilted slightly. “But if you still wish to fight… then I can grant you a fragment of what you once were.”

Eiden blinked. “What I once was?”

> “A light that even gods feared to see rise again.”

Before he could speak, the being raised its hand.

Its body began to fracture, pieces of golden glass shattering and swirling toward him.

“Take it,” the voice echoed, fading. “And remember this name… Solane.”

The embers burst into light.

Eiden screamed as the shards pierced through his chest — not as pain, but as something vast filling the hollow inside him.

Images flooded his mind — cities of gold, oceans that bled light, gods weeping beneath burning skies.

And a symbol — the same one that had split the heavens — branding itself behind his eyes.

Then—

He woke.

---

Eiden gasped, coughing smoke and dust.

He was lying in the ruins of the old mill. Morning light filtered weakly through the broken ceiling. The air stank of ash and iron.

Mira.

He staggered to his feet, his arm trembling. The spear wound was gone — smooth skin where metal had pierced through. Only faint golden veins glowed beneath, like a heartbeat too slow to die.

“Mira!” he shouted.

No answer.

He stumbled through the wreckage until he found the tunnel entrance — half-collapsed, but the faint trail of footprints led deeper inside. Relief flooded him.

She lived.

He pressed a hand to his chest. The warmth of the light still pulsed faintly.

And beneath it — a whisper.

“The Eighth has returned…”

The voice faded with the wind.

He looked at the sky.

Above the rising smoke, the clouds were split — a golden mark burned faintly across the horizon, visible even in daylight.

He didn’t understand what it meant.

But somewhere deep down, something older than him did.

---

Far beyond the valley, in the capital of the Empire, a figure in black armor knelt before a throne of obsidian glass.

“My lord,” the Harvester commander said. “The Golden Vein survived.”

The man upon the throne did not move. Only the faint glimmer of runes traced across his pale hands.

“Good,” he said quietly. “Let him burn brighter.

The gods sleep best when they believe there is still hope.”

---