They flew until the sky turned the color of dying steel.
The last light of day painted the mountaintops in pale bronze, and the world below stretched out into jagged ranges broken by scars of old warfare—trenches long buried, canyons unnaturally straight, stone flattened like it had been crushed by a hand the size of a city.
Torian tightened his grip on Skarn's fur as they descended toward a wide basin, ringed by black cliffs and dead trees turned to glass.
The Spiral in his chest was pulsing again.
Not calling.
Not guiding.
Reacting.
There was something down there.
And it remembered.
⸻
They landed at the base of the cliffs, dust curling up in spirals around Skarn's claws. Torian jumped down and glanced around the ruins—if they could even be called that.
There were no walls. No towers.
Just the remains of what looked like a massive blast crater, cracked wide across the earth like a wound that had never healed.
At its center: a smooth, circular dome of black metal — half-buried, seamless, untouched by age. No vines grew across it. No cracks marred its surface.
Torian stepped closer.
Symbols lined the edge of the metal — not Spiral glyphs, but something more rigid. Military. Faint outlines of what might once have been a seal pulsed once… then again… as his Spiral neared.
He reached out.
Skarn growled behind him.
But it was too late.
The moment his fingers brushed the surface, the Spiral in his chest flared like a second heartbeat. The symbols ignited—brilliant green—and the dome hissed. A seam appeared, light breaking through.
A door began to open.
Wide. Heavy. Slow.
Inside was silence.
⸻
The chamber beyond was hollow and smooth, lined with dead metal bindings, shattered conduits, and scorched runes etched across the floor like binding circles long since broken.
At the center stood a throne of stone and bone, blackened and fused with the floor. Resting on it—
—was a man.
Or something shaped like one.
He was still. Tall even while seated. His arms rested on the throne's sides like they'd never been moved. Armor — or perhaps skin — wrapped around his form in jagged plates, bone-pale with faint glowing veins of green fire threading beneath the surface.
No helmet. No faceplate. Just a face that looked sculpted from ash and pressure.
His eyes were closed.
Torian swallowed.
The Spiral inside his chest was thrashing.
Skarn took a step forward, wings twitching. The fur down his back lifted like needles.
Then the figure's eyes opened.
Not glowing.
Just green.
Like molten jade.
And Torian knew.
This was no guardian.
No king.
No Spiral-bearer.
This was a weapon.
One someone tried to bury.
The figure didn't speak.
He simply… rose.
No creaking. No shift. Just up, as if gravity didn't touch him.
Then — in a single movement — he vanished upward in a streak of force so fast it imploded the room.
⸻
The walls folded inward. The floor caved. The throne shattered.
Torian was flung backward like a leaf in a cyclone.
Skarn dove, wings expanding wide, catching Torian beneath them as the room came down, metal and stone crashing like thunder on their backs.
Silence followed.
Not peaceful.
Stunned.
Dust choked the air.
Cracks split the earth.
Torian opened his eyes beneath Skarn's wing. Everything shook.
They had awakened something that had never been asleep.
Smoke curled like dying serpents across the rubble.
The ground was still trembling, faint but constant — not from an aftershock, but from weight, somewhere above, displacing the air like thunder held in place. Torian staggered from beneath Skarn's wing, coughing. His clothes were ripped, face cut, the Spiral in his chest dimly lit and pulsing in erratic bursts.
He looked up.
The bunker was gone — swallowed, the black dome now collapsed into a crater of shattered stone and warped metal. The sky above it, once soft with dusk, had gone hard and cold. Clouds spun unnaturally in wide circles, not from wind…
…but from him.
Kaelgor.
He hovered high above the ruin, distant but distinct — a tall silhouette against the churned sky, arms at his sides, head tilted slightly upward like he was tasting the air for the first time in millennia.
From this distance, he looked small.
But Torian remembered how the room imploded just from his departure.
There was no heat.
No sound.
No malice.
Just presence.
And then Kaelgor moved.
He raised his right hand.
Fingers opened.
Green fire began to flicker along his forearm — first faint, then pulsing, then swelling, rising in slow arcs above his palm. It gathered, not like wild flame, but like a disciplined storm.
A sphere began to form.
Small at first. Then the size of a boulder. Then larger still — a crushing sun of viridian flame, spinning silently.
Torian stared up in horror, dust still thick in his lungs.
"Skarn…"
Skarn looked too.
And then — Kaelgor threw it.
⸻
The flame dropped like a god's hammer.
It didn't roar. It compressed the air around it, bending light and sky until it touched the earth—
And the world ended.
No fireball.
No rising column of smoke.
Just obliteration.
A pulse of green light exploded outward from the impact point. Everything in its radius — stone, air, life — ceased to be. The blast rippled for miles. Entire hills flattened. Trees turned to ash in midair. The crater tore into the land like a mouth opened by the void itself.
Torian screamed, "GO!"
Skarn didn't need to be told.
He lunged forward, wings blasting downward, lifting them both into the sky just as the second wave of destruction swept outward.
They flew hard, smoke and fire chasing at their heels.
Wind turned to knives. Light cracked in every direction.
For a moment, it felt like even the sky was breaking.
But Skarn's wings held.
They passed through the shockwave's edge, breaking free just beyond the curve of the blast.
Behind them, the world was ruined.
A dead stretch of land now carved into a glowing scar, its center still green-lit and trembling.
Kaelgor floated high above it, untouched, unmoved.
Watching.
Not hunting.
Just… waiting.
⸻
They landed miles away, across a shattered ridge, on a narrow shelf of mountain stone that hadn't been burned — yet.
Torian rolled from Skarn's back, panting, clutching the ground like it might vanish under him.
His Spiral was flickering again — in fear.
He sat there, staring toward the light on the horizon.
Skarn stood beside him, chest heaving, one wing partially scorched but still strong.
Neither spoke.
Not for a long time.
Then Torian whispered:
"He didn't attack us. He didn't speak. He didn't care."
Skarn made a low, guttural sound.
Torian's fists clenched in the dirt.
"He wasn't alive."
"He was a command."
A pause. His eyes burned.
"And I'm the reason he's awake."
They sat at the edge of the world.
The mountain shelf they'd landed on looked down over the still-burning scar Kaelgor had left behind. What had once been a valley of stone and broken battlefield was now a hollowed basin — miles wide, filled with green-glowing smoke and unnatural silence. The blast had not left ash. It had not left fire.
It had left nothing.
And above it all, still floating in the poisoned sky, Kaelgor remained motionless.
Like a god without worshippers.
Like a judgment that hadn't been spoken yet.
Torian watched the distant figure through swollen, dust-smeared eyes. His arms trembled. His face was bruised, his clothes torn, and his Spiral mark burned cold.
Not in pain.
Not in rage.
In guilt.
"He didn't wake until I came."
Skarn moved behind him slowly, massive limbs steady, despite the singed fur and deep gashes across his hide. He didn't make a sound. But he sat close. Closer than before.
Torian didn't meet his eyes.
He just stared at his hands.
I started this.
I lit the fire… and the sky answered with something worse.
He slammed his fist into the stone.
Then again.
Then again, until his knuckles bled and his Spiral throbbed against his ribs like it wanted to crawl back into hiding.
But it wouldn't leave him.
And neither would Skarn.
He felt the massive warmth of his companion settle beside him, wings folding inward, the low, slow breath like a drum that refused to stop beating. Torian leaned into his side.
Not to cry.
Not to beg.
Just to know something real still lived.
⸻
Time passed.
The sky remained sickly green in the distance.
Kaelgor never descended.
Never moved again.
He just… watched.
Until eventually, his form disappeared into the clouds — like he'd never been there at all.
But the scar remained.
And so did the silence.
Torian stood.
He walked to the edge of the cliff, the wind tugging at the ripped edge of his cloak. His Spiral didn't flare. It didn't guide him.
It waited.
Because now it's not about finding something.
It's about stopping something.
He thought about the sanctuary of the Spiral-bearers.
He thought about the ghosts in the fire.
The sword on his back. The glider at his side.
The power in his chest.
And the giant beside him.
He looked to Skarn.
"I think I understand now," he said, voice flat but clear.
"We weren't meant to find peace. We were meant to walk toward what no one else will."
Skarn's eyes narrowed, then dipped once. A nod.
A pact.
No words needed.
Torian pulled the glider off his back. It was cracked, scorched along one wing. He knelt beside it, repairing the straps, binding the frame. His hands worked while the green horizon pulsed.
He looked once more toward the ruin.
Then whispered:
"This doesn't stop until he does."
"And if the world doesn't remember him—"
"—I'll be the one who makes it."
He stood tall.
Thirteen years old. Burned. Bloodied.
And no longer lost.
He was a target now. A spark in a dead world.
And something ancient had seen him.
Torian turned to Skarn.
"Let's go."
The beast crouched.
Torian leapt on.
They rose into the wind.
Above the mountains, the sky was still torn.
But so was he.
And he would not stop flying.