The smoke rose long before they saw the fires.
What had once been scattered villages and strongholds was now a landscape of ruin—ashes in the wind, stones cracked from within, trees twisted as though they had screamed and never stopped.
They had been gone only days.
Now… everything burned.
Darien raised a hand to halt the group. "Shields up. We move in slow."
Caelen summoned his blade, its edge humming with silent power. "Something unnatural did this. No mere raid."
Lys, pale, whispered, "I feel it. The ground—it weeps."
Auren said nothing.
Because he didn't feel the weeping.
He felt the calling.
They found survivors—what few remained. Huddled under collapsed halls, clutching melted Shard relics, whispering about voices from the ash.
One boy grabbed Auren's hand, eyes wide.
"They sang," he cried. "They sang and the earth cracked."
Auren flinched.
The echoes were spreading.
He could feel the same hum beneath his skin—like an itch, like a heartbeat trying to match a rhythm he didn't yet understand.
At the heart of the wreckage stood a blackened statue, untouched by flame.
Not a god. Not a king.
A choir of figures, all faceless, all reaching toward a single symbol:
A broken ring.
Auren stepped closer.
His Shard pulsed in reply.
"Don't," Darien warned. "It could be a trap."
But it was already too late.
His hand had brushed the base.
And in a flash of searing light—
He remembered.
Not his memories—someone else's.
Of a bearer whose song broke empires.
Of a pact made beneath a blood moon.
Of a final scream before silence swallowed the world.
He fell to his knees.
The ash clung to his skin like oil.
When Lys touched his shoulder, he barely heard her voice. "Auren. You're burning."
He looked down.
The glow beneath his skin wasn't just light now.
It was fire.
And it wasn't stopping.
That night, as they rested in what remained of the southern hold, Darien spoke to the others in hushed tones.
"He's dangerous. We all see it."
Caelen nodded reluctantly. "But he's also the only one the Echoes respond to."
"And that might be the problem."
From the shadows, Lys listened.
But said nothing.
Because she had seen something the others hadn't.
When Auren had collapsed, for a single breath of a moment—
The flames had formed wings.
Auren sat apart, eyes on the blackened stars above.
Power stirred within him, stronger now, harder to contain.
But it came with something else:
A choice.
And he didn't know if he'd survive making it.
"Bound in ash," the voice within whispered."Or freed in fire."