The wind was broken.
Torian sat hunched forward on Skarn's back, gripping the coarse fur along his shoulders, eyes fixed ahead as the world blurred beneath them. They had been flying for hours—days maybe—but time had bent since the blast. The sun rose slow, but the shadows shifted fast. The clouds moved like they were being pulled apart from the inside.
Below them, the earth was not recovering.
The crater left by Kaelgor still smoldered behind them, miles wide and unnaturally perfect. A pit of nothing carved into the land. Green cracks ran like roots from its edge, glowing faintly even under the daylight, threading into hills and trees and rock, tainting them.
Nothing grew near the blast.
Nothing dared.
But it was what came after that disturbed Torian most.
The world was reacting.
They passed over a stretch of forest — or what used to be forest. The trees were standing, unmoving, leaves outstretched — but frozen in place like statues. Birds mid-flight hung in the air, wings motionless, suspended by forces that had no name. Not dead. Just… paused.
Skarn veered sharply to avoid them. Even his instincts, honed beyond magic or flame, wanted nothing to do with this.
Torian's Spiral pulsed again.
Not strong.
Not in warning.
Just… echoing. Like it had become aware of something larger than itself.
Like it knew a predator was awake now.
⸻
They landed on a broken ridge just before dusk, where the mountains opened into a deep rift valley torn by centuries of tectonic wounds. The air smelled like copper and ozone — not fire, but aftermath.
Torian jumped down and paced toward the edge.
The sky, high above, had split into layers. Not clouds. Veins. Strips of air flickering with faint green light. Like something had punched through the atmosphere and left a scar in the dome of the world.
Skarn didn't rest. He paced the ridge like a restless beast.
Torian stared toward the horizon, where Kaelgor had disappeared days before. There was no sign of him.
No figure in the sky.
No glow.
But the world remembered.
The Spiral in Torian's chest shivered again.
And for a moment, just a breath — the flame that lived inside him felt small.
Not gone.
Not weak.
Just… dwarfed by what had been unleashed.
⸻
Later that night, as Skarn slept lightly with one eye half open, Torian sat alone by a stone outcropping. He had made no fire. The warmth from his Spiral was enough, but even that he kept low.
He kept glancing up at the sky.
Not out of fear.
Out of certainty.
Kaelgor was still out there. Somewhere. Floating. Breathing. Thinking.
And he was letting Torian live.
Torian clenched his fists.
He remembered the moment in the bunker — that look. No words. Just the quiet, unreadable gaze before Kaelgor vanished upward and shattered the sky.
He hadn't attacked Torian.
He hadn't needed to.
You're nothing to him yet.
But he knows you're here.
Torian pulled his glider close and unfolded it, running his fingers over the singed edges. He had patched the cloth. Reinforced the frame with salvaged bone-ribbing from a ruined beast they'd passed.
He would fly again.
And he would be ready.
Whatever Kaelgor was planning — whatever fire now waited in the quiet dark — he wouldn't run from it.
Not anymore.
Behind him, Skarn growled low in his sleep.
Somewhere in the distance, the ground trembled — but not from footfalls.
The world had begun to shift.
And Torian would ride the wind until he found where the eye was turning next.
At the far edge of the continent, past windswept mesas and valleys long swallowed by silence, an ancient observatory stood suspended above a gorge.
It wasn't built — it had grown into the air. Shaped from stone and light, tethered to nothing, it hovered where gravity once had power and no longer did. Inside its mirrored halls, no fires burned. Only reflections. And silence.
Until today.
A beam of green light shattered the stillness — not from above, but from below. It rose like a reversed flame, spiraling through the floor and bursting into the chamber's center.
The council awoke.
Not from sleep — but from wait.
They had been watching for centuries. Watching for this.
The Verdant Star had returned.
And they knew what that meant.
"Kaelgor lives."
⸻
They were called the Order of the Sightless Flame — cloaked not in allegiance to Spiral fire, but to something else. Something older. Something that feared fire.
They did not speak of Kaelgor's name in their scriptures.
They had erased it.
Buried it.
But they had also prepared.
One of them stepped forward. She wore no hood. Her face was burned — not by heat, but by knowledge. Eyes completely white, scarred by visions she couldn't unsee. She stared into the light.
"It came from the west," she said.
"From near the Cradle of Ash."
Another spoke, voice sharp, metallic:
"There was no army."
"No war machine. Only two signatures."
"One… Spiral-marked."
The woman turned.
"Send the hunters."
⸻
Far away, under black mountains with veins of iron glowing like veins of fire, the hunters awoke.
They didn't sleep in beds. They rested inside carved vaults, like weapons stored until unsheathed.
Each one had been trained to kill Spiral-bearers.
To bind flame.
To steal breath.
They rode beasts with no mouths, armored in black moss and flame-resistant bone.
Six of them.
Silent.
The lead one bore no weapons.
Only a collar made from the jawbone of a fallen flame-wielder, inscribed with runes that could bind power from a distance.
They were not going to find Torian.
They were going to contain him.
And if that failed—
—erase him.
⸻
At the edge of a riverbank where the air no longer reflected properly, Torian crouched near a rippling pool. The water bent wrong. Trees shifted shape in its reflection. Birds flew backward in the sky above.
He splashed a handful across his face.
Behind him, Skarn remained low to the ground, ears pinned back.
"You feel it too?" Torian asked.
The beast didn't growl.
Didn't nod.
He just stared into the trees beyond the river.
Torian stood, slowly.
A crack echoed far off — not thunder, not a tree breaking.
A footstep. Heavy. Weighted with will.
The Spiral in Torian's chest flared — not in warmth.
In instinct.
They were being watched.
Not by Kaelgor.
By something else.
He turned.
And caught a glint of bone-plate on a rider's shoulder.
A figure, half-seen through the forest, mounted on a silent beast with no face.
Then another beside it.
Then another.
Six.
The glider trembled on Torian's back.
Skarn stepped forward, tail low, muscles flexing.
Torian breathed once, steadying himself.
"They're not with Kaelgor," he whispered.
"They're here for us."
And then he ran.
Skarn lunged behind him, wings snapping wide.
The forest exploded into motion.
Torian's boots slammed across the forest floor, glider bouncing against his back, Spiral burning in rhythm with his racing heart. Skarn charged behind him, a silent shadow of fury, crushing roots and low-hanging limbs as they ran beneath the bent light of a wounded sky.
The six riders did not shout.
They made no sound at all.
Only the soft crack of warped branches, and the distant thunder of beasts whose hooves didn't leave prints.
They weren't chasing with urgency.
They were herding.
Driving Torian forward.
Toward something.
⸻
After half a mile, Torian stumbled out of the treeline into a clearing of pale grass, glowing faintly silver in the green-stained dusk. Before he could stop, the air changed.
Cold.
Still.
Held.
Skarn slid to a halt beside him, crouching low, growling deep.
And ahead of them—
Stood a man.
Not armored.
Not glowing.
Not mounted.
He wore a cloak of threadbare silver, face lined with age but eyes sharp with memory. His hair was ash-gray, his expression unreadable, and across his back was a hollow staff, marked with spiral runes that had been… cut.
Not removed.
Severed.
"Don't speak," he said. "Just listen."
Torian hesitated, hand inching toward the glider, Spiral pulsing.
But the man didn't move.
Behind Torian, the hunters stopped. Not retreating. Not charging. Just waiting.
The man continued:
"You think you woke something. You didn't."
"You answered something."
Torian's mouth opened. "Kaelgor—"
"Kaelgor was not created to be destroyed."
"He was created to destroy."
He walked forward, slowly, the silver grass bowing beneath his boots.
"The Verdant Flame was forged as a countermeasure. Not to Spiral. But to hope. To memory. To legacy. Everything the Spiral Flame preserves… the Verdant consumes."
Torian's breath caught. "Then what do I do?"
The man looked him in the eye.
"Run. Until you stop being a child with a fire he doesn't understand."
"Then—come find me. In the drowned city."
"There, I'll show you what Kaelgor was really meant to end."
He turned.
Skarn growled again, wings tensing, but Torian put a hand on his shoulder.
The man raised a hand.
A map of light bloomed in the air — brief and brilliant — showing valleys, rivers, ruins… and at the far southern edge, half-sunken beneath coiled sea cliffs:
Thar'Kaln — The City That Couldn't Burn
Then the man stepped into the trees.
And vanished.
The light faded.
The hunters, still mounted at the clearing's edge, turned and melted back into the forest — their job done. Not to kill. Not to capture.
To deliver a message.
Torian stood still.
The Spiral didn't burn.
It pulsed like a heartbeat returning to a purpose.
Skarn exhaled beside him, tension slipping from his form.
Torian whispered:
"He's not a monster."
"He's the end of remembering."
He looked at the map once more in his mind.
And he knew—
The path forward wasn't through Kaelgor…
Not yet.
It was through what made him.