The Pale Choir did not march like an army.
They drifted like smoke.
And they sang.
Somewhere north of Ashfall, across the frozen deadlands, a village burned—its fire choked by frost, its people silenced not by blades but by song. A low, harmonic chant that echoed through bone and stone, unraveling warmth itself.
The villagers hadn't screamed.
They had simply stopped.
At the edge of the ruined village, cloaked in snow and silence, stood a woman in white.
Her hair was the color of moonlight on frost. Her face was serene—untouched by time or mercy. And around her, the snow never melted. It twisted, slow and graceful, in a deathless dance.
Mother Frost.
The Pale Choir knelt in a circle around her, robed in layers of bleached skin and ice-silk. Their mouths moved as one, singing words no flame could survive. Words that rewrote the world.
Behind her, a man approached—tall, armored in glacial bone, carrying a weapon forged from a fallen god's breath. His eyes were blank. Empty.
A saint.
The Frost-Saint.
Mother Frost did not look at him, but she spoke.
"He walks the ember-path."
The saint bowed his head.
"Ashira's flame returns. The Ashborn lives."
She turned then. Slowly.
Her voice did not echo—it silenced echoes.
"Find him. Unmake him."
The Frost-Saint straightened, silent.
And far beneath them, deep within the frost-soaked ruins of a temple forgotten by both fire and time…
Something shifted.
Something woke.
Back in Ashfall, Kael's sleep was broken by heat.
Not from fire.
From a dream.
He stood in a chamber of black glass and burning chains, the world warped by flame-magic. A throne stood before him—empty, vast, forged from volcanic bone.
And from the darkness behind it came a whisper.
She was wrong, you know.
Kael turned. "Who?"
Ashira.
She burned too bright. Loved too hard. She wanted to free them… but gods do not understand freedom.
A figure stepped forward. Cloaked in fire—but not Kael's fire.
This was ancient. Wild. Chaotic.
Its face was ever-shifting—his own, then Daryn's, then Lira's, then something else entirely.
You are not the last ember, Kael.
You are the first spark.
He stepped back.
The flame surged.
Then—he awoke.
The chamber was lit with orange glow. The heart-flame pulsed wildly, casting frantic shadows across the walls. Lira stood at the edge of the pyre, her blade drawn.
Cynen approached quickly. "He saw something," he said. "Didn't you?"
Kael nodded, swallowing. "A voice. Not hers. Something older."
Cynen looked grim. "Then it has begun."
"What has?"
"The Pale Choir's advance."
He looked at Lira.
"Ready the scouts. They'll come through the Vale if they think we're blind."
Kael stood. "Let me go with them."
"You're not ready."
"I need to be."
Lira narrowed her eyes. "You'll listen to me out there. Understood?"
Kael nodded.
And so it was decided.
The Ashborn would walk toward the frost.
Toward the Pale Choir.
Toward the first battle of the Ember War.