The Hour of the Hollow Sun
The soldiers didn't emerge from the forest—they unfolded from it.
One moment, Kai's team stood alone in a meadow of singing flowers. The next, twenty silver-clad warriors materialized from the very air, their armor forged from frozen moonlight. Their faces were hidden behind featureless helms, but the threat pulsed in the way their spearpoints drank the light—leaving perfect darkness where they pointed.
Veyra's phantom limbs twitched. Rook's dagger-hand trembled.
Then the earth exhaled—a hot, sulfurous breath that could only mean one thing.
Seraphina was watching.
The Guardians of the Last Dawn
Not Mortal, Not Machine Their movements were too fluid, joints bending in impossible angles. When the Silent Apostle tried to speak, their leader plucked the sound from the airand crushed it in a silver gauntlet. Weapons That Remembered Each spear had a memory of every throat it had ever pierced—and they hummed with anticipation. The soldiers' shields bore the scars of dragonfire, still smoldering after centuries. The Unspoken Ultimatum No words needed. The message was clear:
Fight, and the next breath you take will be liquid fire.
The March to the Dragon's House
The structure wasn't built—it had grown from the bones of the world:
Walls of living obsidian, veins of molten gold pulsing beneath the surface.Towers that twisted like spinal columns, capped with skulls of extinct beasts.A gate made from a single, enormous dragonfang—still dripping venom.
As they crossed the threshold, Kai's stolen powers died in his veins. The Empty Prophet's mirror fogged over. Rook's petrified arm cracked like dry clay.
And from the shadows of the vaulted chamber came a voice like tectonic plates grinding:
"You smell of hunger and borrowed time."
Seraphina emerged—not in her full glory, but in a form meant to terrify:
A woman's body, sculpted from black crystal.A crown of still-beating hearts (each from a would-be thief).And in her chest, the Blue Diamond, spinning lazily—watching them.