The woman studied him for a long moment. Then she sheathed her blade and offered a hand.
"Name's Elya. You just saved my life. That means we owe you. Come on, we're moving what's left of our people east before the next patrol finds us."
Kairo nodded slowly. He still felt the phantom heat of battle burning through his limbs. His hands tingled, not from fear, but adrenaline… or something older.
Elya led him through what remained of the caravan, half-smashed carts burned supplies, and injured civilians. There were maybe two dozen survivors in total. A girl no older than ten clutched her mother's hand while an older man with a bandaged eye directed people to gather water and rewrap their wounded.
"We were heading for Redgate," Elya explained as they passed. "Thought we could reinforce the hold there before the Tribunal moved in. Then, a Blightborn pack jumped us outside Ember Hollow. Been running and bleeding since."
Kairo glanced behind him at the wreckage and the bodies.
"You're with the Crimson Concord?"
Elya gave him a sideways glance. "What's left of it, yeah. You know us?"
He shrugged. "I think… I remember hearing about it. Somewhere."
She watched him for another moment before nodding toward the fire pit. "Then sit. Eat. If you're fighting with us, I want you alive."
Kairo sat by a small cooking fire. The pot above it bubbled quietly, emitting a rich, peppery aroma. He hadn't realized how hungry he was until the scent hit him like a punch.
A boy around his age with soot-streaked cheeks handed him a tin bowl of stew.
"You really kill two Blightborn with one throw?" the boy asked. "Saw the blades fly like they were dancing."
Kairo gave a half-smile. "I guess."
"Are you a frontliner?"
"I… don't remember."
The boy nodded, as if that answer made perfect sense. "Yeah. Many Concord fighters struggle to remember things. It's the shock, the magic, or both."
Kairo ate in silence. The stew was thin but hot, full of wild roots and salted jerky. It grounded him in the moment.
He looked down at his halberd, which lay across his lap. The weapon pulsed again, barely visible to anyone else but unmistakable to him, like it was breathing with him.
A soldier across the fire murmured, "That blade of yours is cursed."
Another nodded. "Only weapons that glow like that are relic-touched."
Elya sat beside Kairo and glanced at the halberd. "Have you ever seen a Warbound Relic before?"
"I… don't know what that is."
She tapped her knuckles on her knee. "They say sometimes, when enough blood soaks a weapon on holy ground, the Writ marks it. Warbound Relics. They feed on the memory of the conflict. They remember every soul they've killed. Some go mad just holding them too long."
Kairo looked down at the halberd, then at his hands. They were steady for now.
"And if the weapon's bound to someone?"
"Then you're either chosen… or cursed."
That night, the camp fell into a restless quiet.
Children sobbed softly. Wounded groaned. Only the wind and distant thunder filled the silence between them.
Kairo lay on a bedroll of burlap and scavenged blankets beneath a broken wagon, eyes wide open.
Sleep refused to come. The battle wouldn't leave him, nor would the way the halberd moved when he did as if it anticipated each strike like it had always known how he fought.
His thoughts circled back to the projection from the seal marker. Redgate Offensive. Tribunal deployment. "Writ-cleansed authorized."
Expendable territory.
That's what they'd called it.
These people weren't just caught in the crossfire. They'd been targeted.
And yet... something about Redgate itself kept drawing him like a thread wrapped around his ribs, pulling.
He closed his eyes.
The dream came instantly and violently.
Fire. Endless fire.
He stood alone on a battlefield of white-hot flame. Ash fell like snow. Around him were silhouettes of men, women, and children, all wreathed in smoke, their faces blank, their bodies on fire.
But they didn't scream.
They just watched him.
One stepped forward.
A figure in black armor, faceless, radiating pressure so immense it bent the flame around them.
"Kairo," the figure said.
He stepped back. "Who are you?"
"You are the crack in fate."
The voice wasn't human. It was layered like a chorus of dead voices speaking as one.
"You shouldn't exist. You were undone. But you returned."
"I don't know what you mean!"
The figure raised a weapon. Not a halberd. Something ancient, part spear, part staff, etched with moving runes that flickered like constellations.
"You carry the spark," the figure continued. "You will ignite the War of Ends."
They lunged.
Kairo raised his halberd just in time. Steel met steel. The explosion of force blasted fire in all directions. The dream twisted, and then he woke, heart hammering, breath sharp.
The camp around him still slept.
His halberd glowed faintly red beside him, heat wafting off its edge like it had just been used.
Kairo sat up, the air around him still warm.
He glanced at the others nearby. No one stirred. The fire had burned down to glowing embers. Whatever had just happened, it hadn't disturbed them.
He reached for the halberd.
It felt even warmer than before, as if it had absorbed the heat from the dream. From the vision.
What did that figure say?
"You carry the spark."
"You were undone… but returned."
He looked at his hands. They didn't tremble. He should've felt afraid. Instead, he felt... centered as though something inside him had been waiting for this exact moment to awaken.
He stood quietly and stepped out from under the wagon.
The night was clouded, moonlight choked by distant smoke. He walked toward the ridge above the camp for a clearer view of the path ahead.
From the ridge, he could see the eastern horizon, the direction Elya said they were heading.
Redgate.
Far in the distance, where land met the sky, faint lights flickered like the embers of an unseen furnace. Occasionally, a spark leaped upward, and distant thunder followed.
The fortress wasn't just burning. It was under siege.
Kairo exhaled slowly.
His hands clenched around the halberd's grip.
He didn't know who he was.
He didn't know who the figure in the dream had been, or why he could fight instinctively, or why his weapon remembered death.
But he knew this...
He wouldn't run.