The air around Kael felt wrong.
It wasn't just heavy. It wasn't just cold.
It was aware.
The Betrayer's Path
They descended from the Thirteenth Archive as changed people.
Kael no longer stumbled. He didn't hesitate. The knowledge the Heart of Memory had poured into him reshaped his mind like molten metal cast into a new blade. His every step sparked embers along the path. Behind him, Iris walked in silence, her bow slung at her back but her eyes never still. And Vaerin—old, mysterious Vaerin—watched Kael like one watches a rising storm.
"You said we needed a god to kill," Kael said, voice steady.
"No," Vaerin answered. "I said we needed to kill the right one."
They rode south, toward the ruins of Vael'Sithra—once a city of miracles, now a wasteland of sand and sorrow. Beneath it, legends said, the god called Ithar had buried himself after betraying the Flameborn.
Not asleep.
Not dead.
Just waiting.
The Living Dead
When they entered Vael'Sithra, they didn't find silence.
They found whispers.
The city, though ruined, was not empty. Shadows moved between collapsed archways. Hooded figures with gold-threaded masks stood in the courtyards, speaking in forgotten tongues to stone idols. When Kael drew near, they stopped chanting—and turned.
Their masks cracked open like insect shells.
There were no faces underneath. Just light.
Blinding, searing, unnatural.
"They are his Witnesses," Vaerin whispered. "Eyes he left behind."
One approached Kael.
"Child of the Flame," it hissed. "You walk toward unmaking."
"I walk to finish what your kind started."
"You carry the wound of the world. And the world remembers."
Then it burst into white fire and was gone.
No ashes. No scream. Just silence and the aftertaste of godhood.
God-Tomb
They found the entrance in a collapsed amphitheater beneath the sand, guarded by a stone colossus with ten arms and no head. As Kael approached, the colossus crumbled into dust. The door it had been guarding opened with a groan of stone on stone.
Darkness awaited.
"You ready?" Iris asked.
"No," Kael said. "But I'm going anyway."
Inside, the walls bled light. Not torchlight—something older. Living. The stone was etched with millions of glyphs that shifted and flowed as they walked, retelling the rise of the Flameborn and the betrayal of Ithar—the god who had promised them immortality and instead sealed them in flame.
Kael's mark pulsed. The walls pulsed back.
Then came a chamber.
No door.
No altar.
Just a throne carved from obsidian… and a man seated upon it.
Godflesh
He looked human.
Not beautiful. Not terrifying. Just ordinary. Brown eyes. Pale skin. White robes stained with old blood.
But when he opened his mouth to speak, the walls cracked.
"So you are the last."
Kael didn't answer.
"I dreamed you. A boy with fire in his blood and rage in his bones."
"And I dreamed of a god who bled like a man."
"Then wake up," Ithar said. "And kneel."
Kael didn't.
He drew his blade.
It flared with runes—ancient ones from the Archive that only he now understood. He charged.
Ithar didn't move.
Not until Kael struck.
And when he did, the god's hand moved faster than Kael had ever seen. The blade shattered. Kael flew back, slammed into the stone wall, ribs cracking.
"You don't kill gods with anger," Ithar said. "You kill them with truth."
He touched Kael's forehead.
And Kael remembered.
The Memory That Should Not Be
He wasn't born in Ashvale.
He was born in Elarion, the last citadel of the Flameborn, before it was buried in fire.
He wasn't just descended from the cursed.
He was one of them, frozen in time, reborn centuries later by a spell designed to cheat Ithar's wrath.
His mother had died screaming his true name. His father had been slain by Ithar himself.
He was the Flame Reborn.
The boy who should never have lived.
The god-killer foretold.
And Ithar… had been waiting.
"Now," Ithar whispered, "do you understand? You are not a mistake. You are my mirror."
Kael, broken and gasping, grinned through the blood.
"Then what does that make you?"
"Alone."
The Spark Reignites
Iris's arrow struck Ithar between the eyes.
It didn't kill him.
But it staggered him.
Long enough for Vaerin to chant the words Kael had learned in the Archive. Long enough for Kael to rise, his arms wreathed in flame—not red, but black, the color of forgotten suns.
"You wanted a godkiller," Kael said. "You made one."
He plunged his fists into Ithar's chest.
The god screamed.
And for the first time since the stars were born… he bled.