Al'Zahir's throne chamber glowed under stained glass mosaics depicting ancient victories. Gold light flowed here like fire within crystal. On the opposite side, sitting on his elevated throne of marble and sandstone, King Siro Al'Vahir watched the three strangers approach.
Head dipped, Etreuf advanced. Lyssara followed, her step proud but wary. Adam hung back behind the royal guards.
Siro eyed them with intent stillness. War, history, and legacy hung heavy in the air.
"You came not for glory," he said at last. "And yet you found it."
He rose to his feet from the throne.
"Nadrath's bandits had been strangling our border towns. What you found was not mere rogue element—but cult. You uncovered it. You broke it."
A servant approached with a leather- and gold-wrapped scroll. Siro took it and passed it directly to Etreuf.
"This is your reward. An item from the Vault of Seers. A map."
Etreuf handled it with caution.
Etched in shining ink was a series of landmarks—mountains, gorges, ruins—and a single symbol recurring on its surface: two curved blades crossing a sunburst.
Siro continued.
"It results in a set of legendary daggers, that are said to have incomparable affinity with every school of magic. They select their master. If you ever see them. the world could be altered because of it."
Lyssara gazed at the map, then at the King.
"Why grant this to us?"
He locked eyes with her.
"Because I know what's to come. And I'd like to ensure that when the final fight arrives. I am not alone prepared to meet it."
Preparations for the War Machine
Afterward, in the Chamber of Winds, where sand flowed through time-worn time-devices and magical currents burned in glass tubes, King Siro stood alongside his council.
Capital walls were being strengthened. Every soldier trained with sandwalkers and mystics. All firearms were tuned for magical siege. Airships were maintained, and hawks were dispatched to other continents—each bearing one warning:
"Zyrion no longer sleeps."
Lady Khareem entered discreetly. "There's more."
She placed an object on the table: a fragment of stone torn from the golem's chest. It vibrated unnaturally.
"It's regenerating. And something more—it's beginning to hum."
Siro pinched his eyes. "Hum. How?"
"Not in the way of music. In the way of pressure. In the way that the air around it is denser."
That Night.
As torches dimmed all over the city and the winds settled into troubled sleep, well beyond the citadel, at Wastes' end—
the golem awakened.
Its chest pulsed.
Its eyes opened blazing, not golden as before. but deep purple, burning like miniature event horizons.
The ground beneath it retreated.
Boulders floated, trembled, and then crushed themselves as if gravity had turned sideways.
In silence, the Golem of Zyrion stood—a simple monster of stone, but now a giant of suffocating might. Its core throbbed with gravitational magic, distorting the rules of reality with every breath.
And it walked.
Etreuf, Lyssara, and Adam followed the old map of King Siro for days—a memory of centuries lost written in gleaming glyphs and shifting coordinates. It changed at night, revealing new paths when fire was placed on it.
They walked through blazing ravines, whose temperature quivered like ghosts, and probed into canyons carved by wind and forgotten rivers. Each step brought them further into the Wyrmfang Expanse, unmapped to this era.
"This doesn't belong," Adam growled. "It's nowhere in the records."
"That's why something important is worth hiding here," Lyssara said.
The Cradle of Stone
On the fourth day, they came upon a broken valley where two mountains loomed like broken teeth. The ground shook with prehistoric shudders. Black glass grew in veins on the canyon floor—obsidian scar-flesh of dead magic.
Here, the map unfolded its first riddle.
In its center lay a round altar, dust-covered and still. Twin daggers were carved in precise symmetry, mounted into the throats of two beasts—a winged lion, and a three-eyed serpent.
Lyssara trailed the glyphs. "These aren't mere weapons. They're. seals."
Adam pushed his glasses aside, reciting incantations. "If that's so, then pulling them out might not just reveal to us the daggers. it might let loose whatever they were holding back."
Etreuf stepped forward to the altar.
He reached out and touched the center stone.
It burned cold.
And the ground stone beneath which he stood began to rock.
Trial of the Twin Flame
From the dust arose a voice—not a voice of speech, but of memory, speaking within each of their minds.
"To hold the fire back, you must give blood."
With no hesitation, Etreuf thrust the blade into his own palm and let his blood drip onto the altar.
Reality cracked apart. Dark coalesced. The canyon was gone.
They were not in the true world—but in a time-out-of-time test room, an unnatural dimension of red light and scurrying sand. Two crystal pedestals floated before them—each one with a dagger hanging suspended.
One crescent-curved, its blade aglow silver-blue.
The other jagged, black as the obsidian rock, red veins pulsating in it.
"They're. humming," Lyssara whispered. "I can feel their magic humming with us."
But from the opposite end of the chamber, two figures started to climb—spirit guardians, crafted from ancient energy. The winged lion and the three-eyed serpent, reformed in magical flame and ash, roared as one.
The daggers would be fought over.
"We have to win them," Etreuf said, cracking his knuckles. "Let's do it."
The altar glowed with golden light.
Then—
Everything vanished.
Elliot was standing alone in a world that didn't make sense—an endless sea of whirling stardust and glowing sand, held suspended beneath a sky that didn't have a top.
Before him stood a man—a command silhouette of battle-worn elegance. Obsidian and silver armor, warrior knot in his head, and over his back—the twin daggers: one smoldering with fire, one with the dark glint of the void.
His voice was memory and thunder.
> "You bleed as I once did."
Elliot took slow breaths.
> "You're the one who made the daggers?"
The man walked closer.
I am the first Flamebearer. And you—if you are worthy—will be the last."
He drew out the daggers, their blades singing as they slid away from his back.
"But no name is given freely. You must take it."
Elliot did not have a chance to reply before the warrior charged forward with impossible velocity, daggers slashing through starlight like lightning. Elliot barely dodged the first strike. The second cut into his shoulder—not deep, but accurate, as if testing.
Elliot rolled, placing a hand in the sand, and retaliated with a burst of power. His fist slammed against the ground, sending a shockwave outward. The warrior retreated, unflinched.
You fight in rage," the warrior stated. "But flame with no purpose only burns the wielder."
Elliot's eyes blazed red.
He charged once more, trading punches—his fists against the beat of swords. Each punch of the daggers distorted reality around them. Flame burst across distance. Gravity distored at an angle. Space folded, and Elliot had to react on instinct.
Blood dripped from his lip. He smiled.
You believe I don't know pain?" he sneered. "You believe I'm in fear of it?"
He drove his elbow into the warrior's ribs, and a ferocious uppercut fueled by hellish strength.
>"I was pain. But I chose to become something more."
The warrior drew a deep breath at last. He looked at Elliot—not as an enemy, but as a replacement.
>"Then take them."
He stuck both daggers into the earth.
Elliot moved forward, and when he wrapped his hands around hilts—
They did not fight.
Instead, they responded.
The aura surrounding him shifted. His veins throbbed with power. He felt the echo of a million bearers, all branded into the legacy of these swords. And at their core—the same blood.
> "I knew it," the warrior breathed. "You are of my line."
Elliot's eyes widened.
>'Your blood. bears the flame of the first kingdom. The blood of heroes lost to the world.'
As the world around him collapsed, the warrior nodded again.
> "Make them remember."
Elliot was kneeling at an altar.
A dagger in each hand.
One burned with fire—but was cool to the touch.
The other shone with nothing—void that responded to thought.
Lyssara stepped away, horrified. "What's happened to you?"
Elliot stood.
Not smiling. Just certain.
I saw a brighter future.