The meadow didn't last.
It shimmered, cracked, and faded into mist.
Lira stood again in the real world — the valley where the Third Vault had opened. The obsidian spire behind her was gone, collapsed into glass dust.
Ashrel remained beside her, quiet, gaze lifted to the sky.
"It changed," he said.
Above them, the sun had shifted slightly on its axis — not in its path, but in its color. A soft golden hue, tinted with blue.
The sky was new.
"We didn't kill the flame," Lira murmured. "We changed its shape."
Trellen approached, wiping blood from a cracked lip.
"Then what's with all the screaming up there?"
They turned.
Beyond the ridges, the valley was alive with war cries.
Not from Ashrel's army — many of whom now lay dazed, confused, or simply kneeling — but from something else.
Something arriving.
The gods were waking.
Not the Ones of Fire and Ember.
Not even the Broken Saints of the Hollowmarch.
No — these were the watchers.
Those who had waited after the flame was born, but before it was worshiped.
They called themselves The Remembered.
And they had not wanted the flame to change.
High above, in the fractured sky of the upper realms, Kaelen opened his eyes.
The chains that once bound him in the First Vault were gone.
He stood alone in a plain of shifting light, each step rippling with memory.
He was not whole. But he was awake.
"The Vaults are gone," he whispered.
"But the world still remembers them."
He turned, and behind him stood a figure in robes of woven smoke.
Not a god.
Not a mortal.
A Remnant.
One of the Remembered.
"You did this," it said.
Kaelen said nothing.
But he didn't look away.
"The flame may be reborn," the Remnant said.
"But what it forgets, we do not."
"And now that it no longer guards the borders of memory—"
It stepped forward, and its voice dropped to a whisper:
"We will."
Back in the valley, Ashrel dropped to one knee.
Blood trickled from his nose. His ember-eye faded to a dull grey.
"They're coming," he said.
"Who?" asked Ansha.
"The ones we forgot to fear."
Lira didn't answer.
She could feel it.
The world had shifted its weight.
The Vaults were gone.
The flame had changed.
But some truths remained rooted.
The gods did not die.
They only waited to be remembered.
And now, they had been.