The silence that followed the battle at the Hollow Throne was thick with the weight of the unknown. Even as the battlefield cooled and the blood of war soaked into the ancient stones, Elyra could feel something still watching something deeper than the enemy they'd just faced.
Kael's hand found hers in the dusk-light. Warm, steady.
"Do you feel it?" she asked quietly, her voice barely rising over the wind whispering through the ruins.
Kael nodded, his golden eyes scanning the horizon. "The shard," he murmured. "It's not just magic. It's calling something or someone."
They had found it beneath the roots of the Hollow Throne, buried in ash and molten rock. A fragment of crystalline dark, pulsing faintly with a crimson glow. Elyra had felt it resonate with her Flame the moment she touched it.
And she'd heard the voice.
Not Ashar's.
Something older.
Now, as night descended, the stars veiled behind thick, storm-tossed clouds, Elyra and Kael stood alone before the fragment while the others tended to the wounded below.
She turned to him. "If this shard is connected to the Veil and the Flame… then it might be more than a weapon."
Kael brushed a strand of blood-matted hair from her cheek. "Or a key," he said. "One Ashar plans to use to open something none of us are ready for."
Elyra's breath hitched, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "We have to understand it before he does."
Kael nodded. "Then we take it back to Astralis. To the Flamekeepers. To the Oracle."
She met his gaze. "And if it corrupts us before we understand it?"
He hesitated but only a beat. "Then I'll carry it for you."
"Kael"
"I would carry your burdens, Elyra. All of them. Until the world ends."
Her chest tightened at the raw truth in his words. Their bond had deepened through fire and shadow, but in that moment, it felt like something eternal wove between them.
"I love you," she said, the words simple, powerful.
Kael's breath caught. "And I, you."
He drew her close, his forehead resting against hers. The Flame inside her answered the nearness of his touch, flaring gently not in warning, but in warmth. In promise.
Then, without another word, they wrapped the shard in the sigil-bound cloth Elyra carried and began their descent down the broken hill.
Back at the Astralis outpost, they were met by Serin the Queen's captain, still clad in soot and silver armor. Her eyes widened at the sight of the shard.
"You found it," she breathed. "The last fragment?"
Elyra shook her head. "Not the last. But the most dangerous."
They gathered in the war chamber, its long table now covered in maps, burning candles, and relics humming with old magic. High Seer Tavrin, the Oracle's envoy, was already waiting, his pale eyes scanning them like glass reading firelight.
Elyra unwrapped the shard.
The entire chamber darkened.
The flames of the candles bent inward, as if consumed. The air grew thick with silence. And then, like the whisper of a blade slipping from a sheath, the shard spoke.
But not in words.
In images.
Visions flared across the minds of everyone present.
A tower shrouded in mists beyond the northern pass, pulsing with the same red light.
An altar soaked in blood, where an ancient being slumbered beneath cracked stone.
Ashar, standing before a mirror of black water, his reflection smiling without him.
When Elyra gasped and staggered back, Kael caught her. "It's a memory," she said, voice ragged. "Or a warning."
Tavrin bowed his head. "What you've brought us… is not just a shard of the Veil. It is a piece of the Primordial Seal."
The room fell still.
"You mean," Serin asked, her voice brittle, "the Seal that binds the Hollow Ones?"
"The ones older than Flame or Shadow," Tavrin confirmed. "Yes."
Kael's jaw clenched. "And Ashar is trying to break it."
"No," Elyra said slowly. "He's trying to become it."
That night, Elyra couldn't sleep. The stars had returned, but even their light felt thin and watchful. She stood on the balcony of their tower, the shard locked away in sigil stone, her mind racing.
Kael joined her silently, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind.
"You never sleep after prophecy," he murmured, pressing a soft kiss to her shoulder.
She leaned back into him. "This one was different. It wasn't a vision it was a memory. A truth we're not supposed to know."
Kael said nothing for a while, simply held her. Then: "Do you regret it?"
She turned to him. "Regret what?"
"Becoming what you are. The Flame-Veil. The living tether."
She searched his face. "No. Because I found you in the fire."
He kissed her deeply, slowly, as if anchoring them both to something real amidst a sea of unraveling magic. When their foreheads touched, he whispered, "Then we face what's next. Together."
She nodded. "Always."
The next morning, they gathered a small team: Kael, Elyra, Serin, and two Veilwalkers. Their destination was clear now—the Tower in the Mist, glimpsed in the shard's vision. Rumors called it the Waking Spire, a place where gods once dreamed.
The journey would take them beyond the known borders of the realm.
Into lands Ashar had already touched.
As they rode out at dawn, Elyra felt the Flame and the Veil twist within her. Something was waiting at that tower something tied to her soul, to her past lives, to everything that had brought her and Kael together.
And as the winds whispered across the frost-touched grass, she heard it again:
The end is not destruction. The end is remembrance.