The sky bled rust above the Withered Wilds.
It was a realm forgotten by mapmakers, choked with dying trees and ash-choked winds. No birds sang here. No beasts howled. Only the creaking of twisted boughs and the soft crunch of brittle leaves under Irisen's worn boots kept him company.
He walked alone for three days.
His bread had gone stale. His skin burned from the sun by day and froze under the moon at night. Yet something—some instinct—pulled him forward.
He didn't know how far the Sundered Forge was, only that Kael had pointed east. But the map he carried was nearly unreadable, soaked in centuries of soot and faded ink. Still, every now and then, Irisen would stop and press his hand to the earth. Not seeking guidance—just feeling.
Sometimes the warmth answered. Faint. Flickering.
But never gone.
On the fourth night, he found the ruins.
A broken circle of monoliths stood half-sunken in a clearing of ash and bone. Carvings still clung to the stone—barely legible glyphs of fire and wind, their meaning lost to the years. But something stirred beneath them.
Something alive.
Irisen stepped inside the circle.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the air shifted. A low hum trembled through the ground, and from the largest stone, a faint red glow emerged, like coal roused from sleep.
A voice rasped from the dark.
"You walk in places not meant for your kind, sparkborn."
Irisen drew his dagger, though the blade was more comfort than weapon.
"I walk where I must."
A shape stepped forward from behind the monolith. Not human. Not quite.
She stood tall and wrapped in shadowy robes. Her eyes were black voids rimmed with crimson light. Her skin shimmered like cooled lava, dark with veins of ember threading beneath. Chains trailed from her wrists like broken bindings.
"I am Veyra, Keeper of Ash. Once priestess of the Flamewrought Pantheon." She paused, her voice echoing like hollow bells. "And you carry the spark."
"I don't know what I carry," Irisen admitted. "Only that it burns."
Veyra smiled—a strange, weary thing.
"Good. Doubt is the mark of one not yet broken."
She turned to the monoliths. "This place was once a gate. We called them the Shrines of First Flame. They linked the world. Bound the Realms. But when the gods fell into slumber, their shrines were sealed, and the Ashen Lords salted the land."
Irisen stepped closer. "Can they be opened again?"
"If the flame is strong enough." Her gaze flicked to his chest. "Yours may be."
He stared at the circle of monoliths, then back at Veyra. "Then teach me."
The days that followed were a trial by fire and pain.
Veyra taught not with gentleness but fire. She had no time for hesitation—only purpose. Each lesson tested him. Meditation beneath choking ash. Breathing in heat until his lungs screamed. Channelling flame without letting it consume him.
"Your spark is not magic," she told him. "It is remnant divinity. Magic fades. Flame remains."
One night, she placed a cold coal in his palm and said, "Light it. No flint. No fuel. Only you."
Irisen stared at it for hours.
He remembered Ferrek's voice. The village's disgust. His fear.
He clenched his fist.
And the coal flared.
It didn't burn him. Instead, it sang—a hum that echoed in his blood, like a song too old to be remembered but too true to be denied.
Veyra only nodded.
"The gods stir in their sleep."
On the seventh night, the shrine came alive.
The monoliths blazed with light. A column of red-gold flame erupted in the centre, revealing a portal swirling with molten mist.
Veyra approached him. "You are ready."
Irisen looked at the gate, awe heavy in his chest. "What lies on the other side?"
"Ruins. Trials. Perhaps even the Forge itself. This gate leads to the Ashen Path, an old route between realms." She stepped back. "Few return from it. But those who do… change the world."
He hesitated. "Will I see you again?"
Her ember-lit gaze softened for a moment. "If Flame wills it."
Then she raised her hands, and the portal howled open.
Irisen stepped through.
He fell through fire.
Not heat—memory. He saw glimpses of ancient things: gods forged from starlight, empires carved from molten stone, and wars where the sky cracked and bled. He saw the Ashen Lords rising—bodies of coal and cruelty—and the world turning grey.
He screamed.
And then—
He landed.
The world beyond the gate was unlike anything he had known.
Skyless. Endless. A landscape of floating obsidian islands suspended in a sea of mist and cinder. Strange structures rose from the stones—twisting towers made of bone, boneglass, and steel root.
This was the Ashen Path.
A whisper trailed through the windless air.
You have entered the forgotten road. Beware, sparkborn. The Lords see you now.
And far above, on the tallest island that blotted out the stars, a figure sat upon a throne of swords and ash.
He opened his eyes.
And they burned with hunger.