The world changed as soon as they crossed the cracked hills.
Gone were the silent ruins of Cindralis.
Before them stretched a dead horizon of blackened soil and twisted trees, where the air itself shimmered with heat.
The Ashen Plains.
Even the wind here felt wrong—hot, heavy, carrying the faint stench of scorched flesh as if the land itself had once been alive and never truly forgot the fire that killed it.
The Oracle stopped at the ridge, staff planted in the ground.
"This is where the third Forbidden Core fell," she said.
Her eyes narrowed toward the heart of the plains where jagged crystal spires stabbed at the sky like broken spears.
"But so did the Beast Tide."
Lian scanned the horizon.
The land stretched for miles, empty except for the faint black shapes moving slowly far off—too large, too heavy to be men.
Starbeasts.
Dozens of them.
No… hundreds.
The Core King stood beside him, arms folded. His voice was calm, but Lian felt the weight in it.
"The third Core will be buried deep. The Tide guards it."
He looked at Lian with those cold, measuring eyes.
"Take it… and Kael won't be your only enemy."
Lian didn't reply.
He could feel it now, that same pull he'd felt in the ruins—a call dragging at the two Cores inside him like gravity.
The third was here.
Waiting.
And it wanted him.
They descended into the plains as the sun slid behind a wall of black clouds.
Heat rolled off the ground in waves until every breath burned like smoke.
The first starbeast came before nightfall.
It burst from beneath the cracked earth like an earthquake given teeth—
a hulking, insect-like thing with armored plates glowing faintly from within, as if fire lived in its veins.
The Oracle shouted a warning, wards flaring gold around her as the monster reared back and screamed.
Lian didn't wait.
The Tyrant's Heart surged, power flooding his limbs until the air itself cracked around him.
One swing of his sword split the first claw before it reached them.
The beast shrieked, black ichor spraying like rain across the ash.
But the Oracle's eyes went wide.
"Not just one," she whispered.
All around them, the ground shifted.
Dozens of shapes rose from the earth.
Too many.
The Beast Tide had come.
The Core King drew his weapon for the first time since Lian had met him.
A blade of black metal longer than he was tall, etched in runes that glowed faint blue.
"Hold the center," he told Lian.
Then he was gone, vanishing into the Tide like a shadow cutting through fire.
What followed wasn't a battle.
It was a storm.
The Beast Tide crashed against them in waves, each creature larger than the last, claws and fangs flashing in the ash-thick dark.
Lian fought at the Oracle's side, Tyrant's Heart burning through his veins like molten iron.
But he felt it again—the Core's power wasn't steady.
Each swing was faster, each strike harder… but the heat inside him climbed until every motion felt like it tore pieces from his bones.
The Oracle saw it too.
"Too much!" she shouted over the roar of beasts. "It'll kill you before they do!"
He ignored her.
The third Core's pull had grown so strong it drowned out even the monsters.
He could sense it now—buried beneath the largest crystal spire at the center of the plains.
That was where the heart of the Tide beat.
And where he had to go.
He cut a path through three more beasts, body screaming with the Core's burning power.
The Oracle tried to follow, but the Tide split them apart, forcing her back beneath the flare of her golden wards.
The Core King was a storm of steel somewhere to the east, vanishing and reappearing in bursts of blue light as monsters fell in halves around him.
Lian reached the spire just as the ground split again.
This was no ordinary beast.
It crawled from the earth like a living mountain—scaled hide glowing with molten lines, six burning eyes locking on him at once.
The Alpha.
The Tide's master.
The Tyrant's Heart roared for release.
Kill it.
Lian didn't hesitate.
Power surged until cracks burned across his arms like glowing veins.
His first strike split one of the Alpha's claws clean off.
The second tore half its face open in a spray of fire-bright ichor.
But it wasn't enough.
The Alpha slammed him into the spire hard enough to shake the ground, claws gouging trenches in the stone as he rolled aside at the last instant.
The Tyrant's Heart burned hotter.
Faster.
Until the world narrowed to one truth—
Kill.
Lian drove his blade through the Alpha's throat with a roar that wasn't entirely his own.
Fire poured from the wound like a dying star.
The beast convulsed once, twice… then collapsed in a shuddering heap, shaking the spire as it fell still.
Silence fell over the plains.
The surviving beasts fled into the dark.
The Tide was broken.
The Oracle reached him minutes later, blood on her robes, eyes wide as she saw the glowing cracks running along Lian's arms and neck.
"Your body can't hold it," she said sharply. "Every Core you take burns you closer to ash."
But Lian wasn't listening.
Because from the shattered ground beneath the spire, the third Forbidden Core rose in a column of black fire.
It floated before him, pulsing like a living heart carved from crystal and shadow.
And it called his name.
When Lian reached for it, the Oracle tried to stop him.
"You take a third," she warned, "and you won't be you when it's done."
But his hand closed around the Core anyway.
And the world went white.