The moment they stepped beyond the threshold, the world shifted.
Kael blinked. The air was thicker here—humid, alive, vibrating with buried voices. The red mist clung to their skin like ash. Beneath their feet, the ground wasn't stone, but scorched bone fused into a blackened floor. It cracked softly under their boots.
No torches lined the walls, yet the red glow remained.
Eren muttered, "I've seen cursed catacombs. Even they didn't feel this wrong."
Lyra's bow remained half-drawn, her eyes scanning every movement in the mist. "We're not in the Ashen Marches anymore."
Kael agreed. "This chamber wasn't built… it grew."
As they advanced, the red mist parted slowly like a curtain, revealing statues—scores of them. Each depicted the same figure: tall, crowned, sword buried in the ground before them. The expressions varied—grief, rage, triumph—but the eyes were all hollow.
"Same figure, again and again…" Darric muttered. "Why?"
Isryn stepped closer to one and brushed away the dust. "These aren't statues."
The group tensed.
"They're vessels. Empty ones."
Kael's grip on his newly acquired blade tightened. The runes along its length pulsed dimly, as if sensing something familiar. As if echoing a homecoming.
Then the sound came—distant at first, like steel dragging across stone. Then a hiss. A scrape. Multiple.
Out of the mist, they emerged.
Figures cloaked in blackened armor with red flame leaking from their helms. Their movements were staggered, inhuman, each step leaving scorched footprints behind. They carried jagged blades that seemed to bleed smoke.
The Forgotten Kin.
Kael moved first.
The blade in his hand ignited as he surged forward, flames bursting in a controlled arc behind him.
"Crimson Arc — Sever!"
The blade sang as Kael twisted mid-air, cleaving through the first of the armored horrors. The creature burst into embers, shrieking in a language no one could understand.
Pyra flanked left, her emberblade dragging sparks as she darted through two others with a downward cut that sent molten trails through their armor.
"Behind!" Lyra cried.
Kael spun—too slow.
But Darric's shield intercepted the blow with a thunderous crash. "They're not mindless," he growled. "They remember pain."
Kael's aura pulsed again.
He breathed deep, gathering the embers swirling around his blade.
"Second Form — Crimson Gale!"
With a wide sweeping arc, Kael unleashed a spiraling wave of red fire that carved a path through four more enemies. The force knocked the others back, but more kept coming, rising from the mist like a tide of ash.
"Fall back to the statues!" Isryn called. "They form a circle—we hold there!"
They did.
Back-to-back in a ring of hollow monarchs, the companions stood defiant.
Kael's blade smoldered.
"I don't think this is the test," he muttered. "I think we woke them."
Pyra met his gaze. "Then we put them back to rest."
Kael took a step forward, blade down, eyes glowing.
"They want a king?"
He raised the blade.
"They'll kneel to fire."