The wind shifted in the Ashen Marches.
It carried whispers now—subtle, cold, unnatural. The kind that silenced even the roaring firestorms of the Emberdeep.
Kael stood before the Ashen Oracle.
The Hall of Cinders was a cathedral of flame and obsidian, its ceiling open to the stars, smoke rising into a storm-lit sky. The walls pulsed with ember veins, ancient runes glowing dimly with unreadable prophecy. At its center, resting in a throne of scorched bone, sat the Oracle—an old, withered figure wrapped in a cocoon of blackened bandages and molten gold.
Her voice was not a voice. It echoed inside Kael's mind.
"You have begun to shape the pyre of kings, boy of blood and storm."
Kael met her gaze. "I'm not here for riddles. I need to know what's in that Vault. And why it called to me."
The Oracle's lips did not move, yet the world shuddered with her reply.
"You walk the path of Sovereigns past. Of those who forged realms… and broke them. The Vault stirs because you are not its heir—you are its prison warden."
Kael's fingers curled around the hilt of his blade. Lyra took a step closer, wary, while Isryn whispered a spell beneath her breath—one of protection, or perhaps truth-seeking.
The Oracle slowly lifted a skeletal hand.
"Let me show you."
Suddenly, Kael's mind was pulled into a vision.
Flashes of fire. Thrones crumbling. A crimson sky raining ash and ruin. He saw himself—his eyes glowing with sovereign flame, wings of ember shadow spread behind him—as he marched across a burning field littered with corpses.
And then… silence.
A mountain of swords.
Kael stood at its peak, alone.
Beneath him, the world cracked open. Veilspawn poured from the chasm like a tide, endless and hungering.
The vision snapped away.
Kael staggered back, chest heaving. The Oracle's voice followed him like an echo through fire.
"You were never meant to rise. You are the crimson key… to the Sovereign's End."
Darric stepped forward, hand on his sword. "You dare speak in riddles while the world burns?"
But Kaelen, standing silently behind them all, nodded slowly. "This is not a riddle. This is a warning. The Crimson Mark was never a gift—it was a seal."
Kael's fists tightened.
"So what am I supposed to do?"
The Oracle leaned forward.
"Choose. To burn for others… or to consume all. The Vault has opened, yes—but something within waits. And it remembers your name."
Thunder cracked above.
The ground rumbled beneath the Hall of Cinders.
Far beyond the Marches, at the edge of the world, the Vault's great doors trembled.
And deep within… something stirred.