The wind screamed across the northern plains.

Gray clouds churned overhead, heavy and fast, while the world below stretched out in endless ruin — bones of old cities buried beneath frost and ash.

Eiden and Mira rode in the back of a merchant’s wagon, huddled beneath a worn blanket. Lyra had arranged the passage for them at dawn, warning that the Imperial patrols were tightening their reach.

“Elderpath lies beyond the mountains,” she’d said. “If the old light still sleeps, it will call to you before you arrive.”

Those words had haunted him ever since.

---

The wagon stopped by a crumbling milestone. The merchant — a quiet man with silver rings on every finger — looked over his shoulder.

“Road ends here. You’ll have to walk from now.”

Eiden nodded and helped Mira down. The wind carried the scent of snow and something faintly metallic — like burned air.

They walked until the road vanished into mist.

And then the light changed.

The air shimmered, as if the world itself was holding its breath. The golden runes on Eiden’s arm flared, bright enough to pierce through the fog.

“Eiden?” Mira whispered, gripping his sleeve.

He turned slowly.

Through the mist, a figure approached.

A man — tall, wrapped in dark robes lined with silver thread. His face was hidden beneath a hood, but golden cracks ran across his hands and neck, glowing faintly like molten glass.

When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of ages.

“So it’s true. The Eighth spark has awakened.”

Eiden’s hand went to his dagger. “Who are you?”

The figure stopped a few paces away. The mist curled around him like something alive.

“I was once what you are now,” he said quietly. “A bearer of the light. A guardian of the dawn.”

Mira’s breath caught. “You’re a Lumen?”

He lowered his hood.

His face was pale, beautiful, but fractured — golden fissures ran across his skin, pulsing faintly with each heartbeat. His eyes burned like twin suns dimmed by sorrow.

“I was,” he said. “Until I saw what mercy did to us.”

Eiden’s veins glowed brighter. “Lyra said there were seven before me.”

“She’s wrong,” the man said, stepping closer. “There were twelve. Twelve flames that shaped the world. Twelve gods who believed they could save it.

And in their mercy, they let humanity live.”

His expression hardened. “That mercy destroyed everything.”

Eiden frowned. “You’re saying… it’s humanity’s fault?”

The man smiled — not cruelly, but with pity. “You still think they deserve this world? The gods burned themselves to keep men alive, and how did they repay it?

They forged empires. They hunted our kind. They buried the light beneath crowns and steel.”

He spread his hands. “Now the Empire sits on our ashes — a mockery of the dawn. I would see it cleansed.”

Eiden took a step back. “By killing everyone?”

“By returning balance.”

His voice deepened, echoing like thunder through stone. “The Lumenflame is divine judgment. It does not love. It remembers. You, child, are its last piece — the spark that can finish what we began.”

The golden cracks along his skin flared brighter, and the ground beneath them trembled.

“I am Kael, the Third Flame — and I have come to claim what remains.”

---

Eiden felt the pulse of his own flame rise, answering Kael’s presence. The air grew heavy, alive with pressure.

“Stay back, Mira,” he said softly.

Kael raised one hand. “Show me your will, Eighth. Let me see if you are worthy of the fire you carry.”

Light exploded between them.

Kael’s power struck first — a beam of molten gold that tore through the air like divine wrath. Eiden threw up his hands, the runes on his arm blazing to life. The beam split against an unseen barrier, scattering sparks into the fog.

The ground cracked. Trees turned to ash.

Eiden’s chest burned — not from pain, but from resonance. His flame roared, alive, answering the call of another.

Solane’s voice echoed in his mind:

“The ember remembers what you give.”

He gave everything.

A burst of light erupted from his body — wild, pure, desperate. It struck Kael’s chest and shattered the mist in a single flash.

When the brilliance faded, both stood gasping, half-kneeling, light flickering between them like a heartbeat split in two.

Kael wiped blood from his lip — gold, not red.

“Good,” he said softly. “You fight like the dawn itself.”

Eiden’s hands trembled. “Why— why do this?”

Kael’s eyes softened. “Because mercy made gods weak. You can still choose to be more than that.”

He turned away, the cracks in his skin dimming. “Find me in Elderpath, Eighth. If you wish to know what you truly are.”

And with a shimmer of golden dust, he was gone — leaving only silence and the faint scent of fire in the air.

---

Mira ran to Eiden’s side. “Are you okay?”

He nodded weakly, though his heart still pounded like thunder.

He looked at his hand — at the faint golden burn that hadn’t been there before.

Kael’s light had left its mark.

“I saw something,” Eiden murmured.

“When our flames clashed… I saw the world burning. And twelve lights fading into the dark.”

Mira shivered. “Was it a vision?”

Eiden didn’t answer. He stared north, toward the mountains hidden in fog.

“No,” he said finally. “It was a memory.”

---

Far above them, in the Imperial Sanctum, the veiled woman watched the same clash unfold in her mirrored pool.

“The Third Flame has moved,” she whispered.

A figure behind her knelt. “Shall we intervene?”

“No,” she said. “Let them meet. Every spark that ignites brings us closer to the end.”

She raised her hand, touching the mirror’s surface.

“Let the Eighth remember what the gods forgot — that light burns brightest when it consumes everything.”

---