The wind had changed again.
It no longer howled or roared — it whispered. Soft, constant, like a voice murmuring just beneath the world's breath. The trees didn't sway. They leaned, as if listening.
Torian rode low on Skarn's back, his glider strapped to him, cloak pressed against his spine by speed and altitude. Below them, the world gave way to jagged ravines and cracked earth that pulsed faintly with green veins — scars from the moment Kaelgor rose. Places where the earth had flinched and never healed.
They hadn't seen Kaelgor since.
But they felt him.
The Spiral in Torian's chest, once bright and warm, now pulsed more like a warning beacon than a fire. It didn't show him the way — it told him where not to go. The pressure in his ribs grew every mile south.
Still, he didn't stop.
Skarn hadn't slept in two nights. His wings moved with perfect force, but slower now — not from weakness, but caution. He was waiting for something. Sensing the shift.
They were both hunted now.
Not by soldiers.
Not even by the flameless Order.
But by the memory of what had been unleashed.
⸻
By midday, the sky darkened.
Not with clouds, but with pressure. The air above the southern cliffs folded downward like a dome of invisible stone. Beneath it, ocean waves raged in a circle — a maelstrom that did not spin, only tore, thrashing endlessly around the half-submerged spires of a ruined city.
Torian stared in awe.
"Thar'Kaln," he whispered.
It had once been beautiful — that much was clear. A city carved from pale white stone and veined with bright blue crystal. What remained now were broken bridges, slanted towers, and flooded streets that curved down into the deep like steps descending into a god's grave.
Lightning flashed within the water.
The sea had not swallowed it.
It had chosen to stay around it.
The city wasn't drowned.
It was guarded.
⸻
Skarn circled once before diving toward the rocky cliffside overlooking the submerged ruins. The wind here was too violent, spiraling in erratic bursts. Skarn landed with a heavy lurch, claws carving into stone.
He growled low as they touched down.
Torian jumped from his back and stared across the churning waters. The nearest broken tower was maybe two hundred feet away — its roof cracked, but open. A collapsed bridge reached halfway across the gulf between them.
His Spiral pulsed again.
He unfastened the glider.
"You can't make that flight," he said to Skarn. "Winds are wrong."
Skarn grunted, displeased.
Torian placed a hand on his shoulder. "I'll go first. Meet me from the other side once you find a safe flight line."
Skarn snorted, then gave a curt, tense nod — and crouched low, letting Torian mount the edge of the cliff.
The wind howled past him.
He opened the glider — the rune-threaded frame humming in the storm.
He ran forward. Three steps. Four—
And jumped.
⸻
The wind nearly broke him.
It didn't push. It dragged. Caught in a downspiral, Torian twisted hard to control the glider's pitch. A crossburst slammed his side and nearly sent him tumbling. His arms screamed with strain as he angled his wings and forced a path through the unnatural chaos.
Below him: black water.
Beneath the water: shapes. Not just ruins.
Structures.
Symbols.
Massive rings half-lit with green fire, sleeping in the deep.
Then—
The rooftop.
He angled down, pulled hard, and dropped into a half-collapsed tower as the wind screamed over him like a warning. He rolled twice, smashed into old stone, and came up coughing and sore.
But alive.
Torian stood slowly, dragging the glider to a dry patch of floor.
The wind outside kept howling.
But in here… it was quiet.
And something beneath his feet pulsed.
Not Spiral.
Something older.
He descended into the drowned city, alone, the breath of a weapon long sealed rising from the stone like mist.
The stairs groaned beneath Torian's boots.
They weren't made of stone, not entirely. Something else—some fusion of silverglass and Spiral-forged alloy—lined the steps. His Spiral pulsed faintly with each one he took, but not with warning. It was as if it were… listening. Measuring the echo.
The tower he'd landed in tilted at an angle, the top long shattered, and the floor now bowed toward what had once been the lower level. Water had flooded the lower rooms centuries ago, but the interior architecture remained—strangely intact, untouched by decay.
No vines.
No moss.
Just silence.
And the feeling that this place remembered him.
Torian reached the lowest step, where the hallway curved downward into a broken arch of sea-glass and emerald metal. Light filtered through the cracks in the ceiling, casting deep green shadows along the walls. The scent of salt and old heat clung to everything.
Not Spiral heat. Something colder, deeper, pressurized.
The sound of the sea above them had vanished. In its place was only a soft, constant hum, like flame sealed in glass. Unmoving. Waiting.
Torian stepped forward.
⸻
The hall widened into a rotunda—a massive, rounded chamber half-flooded by seawater. Ancient metal braces ringed the walls like ribs, cracked in places, with runes etched into them that sparked weakly when Torian passed. Not fire. Not Spiral. A different kind of power—one that didn't want to be known, only obeyed.
In the center of the room stood a broken sculpture. It must once have towered above everything, but now lay in halves—its arms shattered, the head missing entirely.
Even so, Torian recognized it.
A figure in gold armor, hands raised, flame pouring from his chest.
One mural along the wall still stood untouched, preserved under a pane of translucent green stone. Torian walked toward it, brushing off the sea-dust that had gathered in pockets along the bottom. What he saw made his blood still.
Six figures stood in a circle—each marked with a different Spiral glyph. They weren't fighting the armored man in the middle.
They were kneeling.
All six.
In grief.
Chains of light ran from their Spiral glyphs into the figure's chest. There was no battle in the mural. No violence.
Only mourning.
And the phrase carved beneath it, in an ancient Spiral dialect:
"He begged to be sealed."
Torian stepped back.
Kaelgor.
He hadn't been overthrown.
He'd been loved.
And he'd been the one to ask them to end it.
Torian's hand tightened into a fist. He felt the heat in his chest twist—not in rage, but in a terrible understanding.
I could be him.
One day… if I lose control.
⸻
There was a sound then. Deep below. A vibration in the stone. A rhythmic surge—like a second heartbeat, but not Torian's. Not his Spiral's.
The water in the room rippled.
Then pulsed outward in a perfect ring.
And from below the rotunda, a panel of the floor began to descend—quietly at first, then faster, groaning with age and pressure. It formed a ramp downward, descending into a vault untouched by water.
The Spiral in his chest didn't flare.
It faded.
Whatever lay down there—wasn't Spiral.
And didn't want it to be.
Torian looked back once toward the exit.
Skarn was still far off, unable to reach him in this wind-wrapped tomb.
He tightened the cloth around his wrists, checked the hilt of the sword on his back, and stepped down into the black.
⸻
The vault below was silent.
Not empty—silent. A deeper thing. The kind of quiet that replaces sound, like the world itself didn't exist here anymore. The walls were polished obsidian, smooth and angled, with flickers of green light coiled behind the surfaces like fireflies trapped in crystal.
And in the center…
Stood the Echo.
It was shaped like a man.
But only vaguely.
A skeletal construct of burning green flame wrapped in bone-iron, its ribcage exposed, its arms far too long. Its legs ended in points that didn't touch the floor, but hovered just above it. No face. Just a long vertical slit where a head should've been, pulsing with light.
Torian stepped forward.
The thing didn't move.
But he knew it was watching.
He reached for his glider-staff.
"Who are you?" he said.
The voice that answered wasn't sound. It was a vibration in the room, like all the stone speaking at once.
"Not Kaelgor."
"Just a memory of what he gave away."
Then it moved.
⸻
The Echo launched at him in a streak of emerald fire, and Torian dove sideways, rolling behind a broken slab of shielding metal. The heat that slammed against it was like liquid lightning—blazing without heat, tearing without force.
He didn't hesitate.
Torian raised the glider and struck the latch—the wings snapped out, catching a gust of upward air. He launched into a wide arc around the room, bouncing from wall to wall, trying to stay airborne.
The Echo followed.
It didn't fly.
It floated, its motion fluid, like thought without friction. Torian ducked, rose, twisted sideways, and blasted out a small burst of Spiral fire from his palm—too weak. It passed through the thing's chest like it wasn't there.
"I can't hurt it!"
He landed hard and rolled, just as the Echo descended like a falling sword. The floor cracked. Green lines webbed outward.
And the memory inside the creature screamed—not in rage.
In grief.
"He begged us to break him."
"But we sealed instead."
The voice came again. From all walls. From all stone.
Kaelgor's voice.
Or… what was left of it.
Torian backed away.
Then the floor above shattered.
Skarn landed.
⸻
The beast hit the vault like a meteor, wings drawn close, claws flashing. His roar was so loud it made the vault shudder, and the Echo turned too slow.
Skarn slammed into it, jaws open wide.
The green fire reacted—pushing outward in a burst of pressure. Skarn howled and drove the Echo into the wall, clawing, biting, ripping bone-metal apart as if trying to dig through time itself. The thing struck back, flame lashing across Skarn's flank—but the beast didn't falter.
He crushed it.
Snapped its torso with a crack that echoed into the deep.
The Echo collapsed.
Its light dimmed.
And then—Torian touched the wall.
⸻
A memory rushed in.
A circle.
Six Spiral-bearers.
Kaelgor at the center, kneeling, hands open, fire pouring from his chest not in violence… but willingly. Each of them giving a piece of themselves to create a seal — not to contain him, but to hold onto the part of him worth saving.
Then—
The seventh seal failed.
A glyph turned black.
And Kaelgor's eyes opened…
Not in hatred.
In emptiness.
⸻
Torian stumbled back, breath ragged, the vision fading.
The Echo was gone.
Skarn stood over him, chest rising and falling, green scorch across his shoulder.
Torian looked up at the cracked ceiling above.
He knew now.
Kaelgor wasn't corrupted.
He sacrificed himself.
And something failed him.
The seal wasn't supposed to break.
But it had.
And now—
So had the world.
The sea was beginning to take the city again.
Torian could feel it—the slow pull of the ocean returning to claim what had defied it. Hairline cracks spiderwebbed through the vault's ceiling, saltwater weeping through seams in rhythmic drops. The green glow had begun to fade, replaced by the deeper pressure of encroaching tides.
Skarn stood beside him, muscles tensed, wings folded halfway back, his massive frame covered in streaks of soot and Echo-burns. But his eyes were clear. Focused. As if even he understood that what had just happened wasn't a battle.
It was a revelation.
Torian knelt beside the remains of the Echo: scorched bones, fragments of cracked emerald flame crystal, and the soft, dimly pulsing core that had once spoken to him. It flickered still, like a lantern that refused to go out. Not alive. Not sentient. But holding memory.
He reached toward it—hesitant. The Spiral in his chest didn't warn him. It flared once, but not in fear.
In… agreement.
His fingers brushed the surface—
—and the world around him changed.
⸻
Not a vision.
A memory.
He stood in a circle of ash and fire.
The sky above was split by storms, a wounded sun weeping gold light across a broken battlefield. Six figures stood in a wide ring, their Spiral glyphs glowing faintly — not as weapons, but as links. Their faces were hidden. Their flames not flaring in aggression, but in sorrow.
And in the center—
Knelt Kaelgor.
Not the monster.
Not the echo.
But the man he once was.
Gold armor plated across his chest, shoulders broad and braced like a soldier preparing for burial. His face was calm. Young. Tired.
Torian saw himself standing beside the others, flickering between reality and memory — a ghost among ghosts.
Kaelgor's voice was quiet.
"You know what it takes.
You know what I am now.
This flame… is not Spiral anymore."
One of the six knelt beside him.
"We don't want to lose you."
Kaelgor looked at his hands.
"You already have."
Torian felt it then.
Each of the six bore a different Spiral.
But one — a seventh, hidden in the vision's edges — stepped forward late. Unwilling. Hesitating.
His glyph was cracked.
And when the sealing began, he broke first.
The others screamed, trying to hold the circle.
But Kaelgor looked up — and understood.
"So be it," he whispered.
Then he let go.
Flame erupted from him. Not wild, but pure. It swallowed the circle. The battlefield. The sky. All that remained was Verdant.
And then—
Torian fell back into the now.
⸻
He gasped, knees buckling.
Skarn caught him mid-fall, lowering him gently to the cracked vault floor. Water now poured freely through a gap in the ceiling, the tide reclaiming what should have never been touched.
Torian stared upward.
"They didn't stop him," he said aloud.
"They helped him.
They tried to hold him together.
But one of them broke.
And the seal shattered with him."
He touched the Spiral at his chest.
That could be me.
That could be any of us.
Kaelgor wasn't a destroyer by nature.
He was a weapon forged in fear, wielded by people who thought they were saving the world… until they hesitated. And now, what was left of him—Verdant, hollow, immense—floated through the sky, remembering nothing but power.
Torian stood, legs shaking, fire slowly flickering beneath his skin.
"I'm not going to make the same mistake," he said.
"I won't let it happen again."
Skarn moved beside him, brushing him with one wing, as if to say you're not alone.
Together, they turned back toward the ruined stair, just as the chamber began to collapse fully. The sea poured in like a curtain being drawn, swallowing the past. But what Torian had seen would not vanish.
He carried it now.
The truth:
Kaelgor chose his fate.
And the only way to end him…
Was to understand why he trusted others to do it.
⸻
By the time they reached the surface again, the wind had calmed. The storm that had raged over Thar'Kaln for centuries had faded to stillness, as if the sea itself had exhaled.
Torian stood on the edge of the broken bridge, soaked to the bone, arms bruised and burned.
He looked across the waves, at the world beyond the cliffs.
His Spiral flared gently, and for once, he didn't feel like a child holding a power too large for him.
He felt… chosen.
He turned to Skarn.
"There's more," he said. "The other seals. The other Spiral-bearers. They didn't all die. Not all of them."
He grinned, tired but fierce.
"I'm going to find them."
Skarn gave a low, approving growl.
And they took off into the sky once more.
The war had not begun.
But the truth had.