The Shardspine Mountains loomed like broken teeth against the dawn.
Sera tightened the straps of her cloak as the wind screamed over the cliffs. Her small band — a dozen brave individuals, each with a spark of Red Hollow in their chest — trailed behind her, their breath fogging the icy air.
They had departed the warmth of the Emberfields.
Nothing grew here.
Here, even fire shook.
But they continued.
Because the world was waiting for it.
---
Weeks turned into days.
They found remnants of the old world hidden in the mountains — old spires shrouded in snow, broken statues half-immersed in ice.
Proof that once, long ago, something had been here. and had been abandoned.
The night wind carried strange sounds:
Whispers, as if a thousand voices breathed on the edge of hearing.
A few of Sera's traveling mates began to dream.
> "I dreamed of eyes," one complained by the fire, shaking though the flames made her heat.
"Like stars. but wrong."
One awoke yelling, swearing he'd seen a hand of blackness reaching for him out of the storm.
The further north they rode, the thicker grew the air — thick with something old and hungry.
Sera lay awake late into each night, staring at the fire, with the fear seeping at the edges of her mind.
---
And one evening, they found it.
In the midst of a shattered valley stood a spire — blacker than obsidian, taller than any peak.
It gave off an abysmal cold, so deep that their flames dwindled to mere sparks when they reached it.
The spire pulsed.
And with each pulse, Sera's own flame inside her faltered.
This is not natural," she breathed.
"This was not forged. It was cultivated."
The ground that lay beneath them trembled and creaked.
From the cold earth, Wraithborn rose.
Terse, aberrant forms of bone and ice, bound in coils of dark flame.
The initial Wraithborn.
---
The battle was madness.
Sera's soldiers fought heroically, their embers infusing their swords, but the Wraithborn would not stop.
Every one of them brought down, there would be two to take their place from the icy earth.
Sera bellowed a retreat, rallying her people towards the narrow mountain pass.
Retreating, the spire pulsed once again — and a grotesque roar rent the heavens, shedding snow from the cliffs.
On top of the spire, an opening split, as though an eye had blinked open.
An ancient and angry presence had been awakened.
---
Sera and the remaining survivors just made it over the mountains.
She fell at the gates of Red Hollow, her flesh ice-bitten, her heart pounding in terror.
Rael caught her from falling, summoning healers.
When at last she could speak, her voice was rough:
> "It's coming," she croaked.
"Something worse than the Ash King.
Something older.
We must prepare."
---
That night, throughout the Emberfields, the flame shrines shook.
And in the distant darkness beyond the mountains, the black spire's heartbeat quickened.
---
Far away, under a veil of stars, one figure stood and looked at the mountains from a high ridge.
Kairo.
His cloak of living flame billowed in the cold wind.
His golden, fierce eyes contracted as he looked at the new darkness spreading.
He breathed deep, feeling the world's need again.
> "So," he whispered to the night,
"Then it begins."
The flame in his hand burned hotter.
Kairo stood before the Shardspine.
And began to walk.