The air grew colder as they ascended the Forgotten Path, where no sun had shone in a thousand years.
Serai gritted her teeth through the pain. Her shoulder still throbbed from the wound inflicted by the Covenant Blades, but the burning had faded to a steady pulse.
Auren walked beside her, silent.
The trail twisted between skeletal trees, their branches gnarled and clawed toward the sky. Above them, the eclipse had begun slivers of moon now swallowed by shadow. It was coming. The convergence.
And at the end of the path waited the Oracle of Shadows.
The one who had witnessed every eclipse and remembered every truth even the ones the gods tried to bury.
"Are you sure she'll speak to us?" Serai asked, breath visible in the air.
"She won't speak," Auren replied. "She'll show."
Serai swallowed hard. "And if I don't like what I see?"
Auren glanced at her. "Then you decide whether to change it or accept it."
The gates appeared not as stone but as darkness frozen into an arch, shifting and whispering. Carved into its center was a symbol older than language: a spiral within a crescent.
Auren placed his hand on the gate.
It trembled, then dissolved.
Serai followed him inside.
They descended stone steps carved into obsidian.
Torches lit with indigo fire as they passed. Mists curled around their feet. The walls were covered in runes that shimmered when Serai looked too long each letter tugging at memories she didn't own.
Finally, they entered a vast chamber.
At its center floated a single pool of black water, rippling though nothing touched it.
Across from it stood a figure.
The Oracle.
Her body was mist. Her eyes, galaxies. Her voice, layered like a thousand whispers.
"Moonbound child… daughter of the forgotten flame… you have come."
Serai stepped forward.
"I need to know who I am."
The Oracle raised one hand, and the pool began to glow.
"Then let the truth unfold."
Visions erupted.
Serai's body stiffened, but Auren held her steady.
The pool showed a time before kingdoms. Before light and shadow were enemies.
A realm of unity.
A being of twilight a goddess with hair like dusk and eyes like flame. The first Moonbound.
She bore two children twins.
One with golden wings. One cloaked in night.
But the gods feared the prophecy:
"When the moon weeps, the line of twilight shall awaken the flame of the end."
So they divided them. Killed the mother. Split the realms. Burned her name from the sky.
The boy survived reborn as Auren.
The girl? Hidden in light. Her memory sealed. Her power caged.
Serai.
She wasn't just born of both bloodlines.
She was the lost heir of the goddess.
The daughter of the moon and the flame.
And her awakening was the key to the final eclipse.
Serai staggered back from the vision, gasping.
"No… it can't be…"
Auren steadied her. "You saw it."
"I'm not just a mage… I'm…"
"A flame that can end worlds," the Oracle whispered. "Or save them."
Serai clutched her chest. "Why me?"
The Oracle turned her gaze on Auren.
"Because he chose you."
"And you chose him."
"Together, you are balance."
"Apart… you are weapons."
Silence.
Then the Oracle lifted her hand again.
From the pool rose a sword silver, black, and gold, with an eclipse-shaped pommel.
"This is the Blade of Veilfire," she said. "Forged in unity. Only the true heir may wield it."
Serai stepped forward.
As her fingers closed around the hilt, the blade pulsed.
It accepted her.
Wings of fire and moonlight flared behind her, just for a moment.
Auren knelt. "My lady…"
She grabbed his hand and pulled him up.
"No kneeling."
He stared at her uncertain.
She smiled faintly.
"We fall together, remember?"
The Oracle began to fade.
"Your enemies gather, Moonborn Flame."
"And not all of them come from the light."
"Some sleep beside you still."
Serai and Auren exchanged a glance.
"What does that mean?" Serai asked.
But the Oracle was gone.
And the chamber went dark.
Outside, lightning split the sky.
A ship descended from above a massive warship of golden steel, bearing the sigil of the Solari throne.
The Empress herself stood at the helm.
Her eyes glowed with righteous fury.
"Bring me my daughter," she commanded. "Dead or alive."
And behind her… another stepped forward.
A masked figure cloaked in dark flame.
A twin once lost.
Auren's brother.
The one who had betrayed the eclipse bloodline.
Outside the Oracle's sanctum, the wind had changed.
Auren sensed it first the metallic tang in the air, the unnatural silence of birds gone still. He drew Serai closer behind the jagged ruins of a stone pillar as the eclipse above throbbed like a beating heart.
"They've found us," he murmured.
Serai gripped the Blade of Veilfire tighter, the sword now humming with each breath she took.
"How?" she whispered. "We masked our trail."
Auren's jaw clenched. "Someone betrayed us."
The words felt like poison.
Above, the Solari warship drifted like a predator across the sky. Runes of light scrawled down its underbelly, pulsing with power. On the deck stood Empress Lysara, veiled in a robe of golden flame.
Flanking her was the mysterious figure cloaked in shadow face hidden by a bone-white mask cracked through the middle.
Auren stared at the masked figure as his blood went cold.
"…It can't be."
Serai turned to him. "Who is that?"
Auren took a shaky breath.
"My brother."
Flashback — Years ago, Temple of Eclipse
Twin boys stood beneath the black moon. One bore eyes of stormlight, the other of seething flame.
They were inseparable once.
Until the Flamebound Trial.
Only one could survive with their magic intact.
Auren chose to run.
His brother, Kael, chose to burn.
"He was lost during the trial," Auren said, voice rough. "I thought he died."
Serai's voice was soft. "He didn't. He became something else."
"A vessel," Auren said bitterly. "For the gods who wanted us broken."
A sudden blast of golden light struck the ground meters from them.
Dust flew. Rock cracked.
A unit of Solari Paladins dropped from the ship, clad in radiant armor, weapons drawn.
"Daughter of Light!" one of them bellowed. "By decree of the Throne, surrender yourself and the heretic you travel with!"
Serai stepped forward, sword gleaming.
"I'm no one's daughter anymore."
The battle exploded in an instant.
Serai moved like wildfire, blade singing with shadow and moonlight. Her spells danced in spirals crescent-shaped wards that flared on contact, knocking back their enemies.
Auren summoned his darkness, tendrils twisting into wolves of midnight. He fought with grace and wrath, every strike calculated.
But they were being pushed back.
For every Paladin they dropped, another came.
Then he landed.
The masked figure.
Kael.
The ground buckled beneath him. Light and darkness crackled around his limbs like unstable lightning.
He removed his mask slowly and his face was a mirror of Auren's, but marked with fire-runes burned into his skin.
Serai stared. "He looks like you."
"He was me," Auren said, eyes narrowing. "Before I chose peace."
Kael smiled. "And I chose power."
Kael raised his hand—and the sky split.
Magic screamed as a rift tore open above them, swirling with both dark fire and holy flame.
Paladins backed away, trembling.
Only the Empress remained watching, unfazed.
Kael's voice was cold. "The gods no longer whisper. They demand."
He pointed at Serai.
"You are the key to their silence."
Serai raised her blade. "Then let them come."
The rift pulsed—
But before Kael could strike, the Oracle's voice echoed through the ruins:
"Enough."
A wall of shadow fell like a curtain between Serai and Kael.
"This is not your moment, fallen one. Not yet."
Kael snarled. "You dare—!"
But the Oracle's power was absolute here. Even he couldn't breach it.
"If you desire war, return to your masters. The flame of dusk is no longer yours to claim."
Kael gave Serai a long, unreadable look.
Then he vanished burning into black light.
After the battle, Serai and Auren stood among the ruins, breathless, bleeding, but alive.
"Your brother… he's strong," Serai said.
"Too strong," Auren admitted. "He's fused with divine fire. That power isn't mortal anymore."
"Then we need allies," she whispered.
Auren nodded. "And time. Before the eclipse fully converges."
They turned to the pool once more.
The Oracle's final words shimmered in the reflection:
"You cannot save each other if you do not save yourselves first."
As they left the Oracle's sanctum, the sky wept with silver rain.
And far away, in the Throne of Light, the Empress lit a candle for the daughter she would have to destroy.