The Door That Should Not Be
The Ruins of Vhal'Zarim were a forbidden place even to the ancients. A desert of jagged glass and blackened bones, where the sun refused to shine. Once a city of scholars and sky-watchers, now it was known only by one name among those who feared what truth could cost:
The Door That Should Not Be.
And it was opening.
Kael could feel it like a headache behind his eyes—something was pulling at his blood, his thoughts, his soul. The mark of the Whispered Flame pulsed on his hand, as if in warning.
"This place is cursed," Ash muttered, stepping over the remains of a long-dead warding circle. "I don't mean old-gods cursed. I mean cursed like the ground hates being walked on."
"This isn't a place," Rael said. "It's a memory trying to become real again."
A Cult in Waiting
They weren't alone.
The Cult of the Hollow Sovereign was already there—hooded figures in robes spun with veins of gold and black. At their center stood a tall woman with a twisted crown of light. Her face was ageless, but her smile was wrong, too wide, too calm.
"Kael of Ash," she said, her voice like wine poured over shattered glass. "You've come home."
"I've never been here," Kael replied.
"You have. Not in this life—but in the one that still clings to your bones. You were ours. And you will be again."
The wind shifted, and the air shimmered. Behind her, a monolith of obsidian pulsed like a heartbeat.
"The Breach," Iris whispered. "That's not a door—it's a scar. They're trying to tear reality."
"They're trying to bring something through," Rael said, his eyes wide with fear. "And it's not a god."
Blood as the Key
The cult began chanting.
Kael staggered forward, blood dripping from his nose. The monolith was drawing from him—feeding on him. The mark on his palm burned white-hot.
"You are the Anchor," the crowned woman hissed. "The wound in the world. The gate will not open without your blood."
Ash hurled a throwing axe—it struck a cultist in the skull. Chaos erupted.
Swords clashed, magic ripped through the air, and Kael fell to his knees as the Breach began to open. Darkness poured from the monolith—not absence, but presence. A wrongness so ancient it had no name.
Kael heard voices from beyond it.
"Return to us, O Flameborn.""Unshackle your true self.""Burn the veils."
The Choice
Kael could stop it—he could feel the Whispered Flame within him rise, ready to close the breach.
But the voices… they offered something else.
Power.
Answers to questions that had haunted him since birth. A way to unmake the gods who cursed him. To destroy the world that cast him aside.
His friends were shouting.
Ash held off three cultists, blood streaming down his arm.Iris screamed his name.Rael was already running toward the monolith with a blade of light, ready to sever it.
Kael reached out.
The Breach called back.
Then—
He turned his hand over, pressed the burning mark to the monolith—
And reversed it.
The flame roared.
The mark exploded in light.
The Breach screamed as it tore itself closed, collapsing into nothing, dragging half the cult with it into oblivion. The crowned woman shrieked and vanished in a shatter of silver dust.
Then silence.
Only the echo of the wind and the sound of Kael gasping for breath remained.
Aftermath
The Ruins of Vhal'Zarim were quiet again.
Kael stood slowly. Something in him had changed—strengthened. But also… fractured. He had touched the threshold of something primordial, and it had looked back at him.
Ash limped over, grinning. "Still with us, fireboy?"
Rael clapped him on the back. "That's twice you've saved the world. But who's counting?"
Iris wasn't smiling. She watched Kael with careful eyes.
"You chose to close it," she said. "But why did it want you in the first place?"
Kael didn't answer.
Because part of him still wanted to open it again.