It was supposed to be a peace meeting.
The city of Velmire stood quiet beneath a sky too still. Snow did not fall. Birds did not sing. The Black Reliquary dimmed its inner flame, and even the cultists breathed more softly.
They came with no weapons.
Just two guards, one scribe, and the Heavenblade Prince himself.
Ashen stood alone at the entrance.
Not cloaked in glory.
Not crowned in shadow.
Just Ashen—the man, not the myth.
His eyes like embers.
His hands empty.
They faced each other across a floor of polished stone, where light and ash mingled in silence.
Caelum stepped forward.
His blade, Solstice, remained sheathed.
Ashen nodded once.
"You returned sooner than I expected."
Caelum's eyes were unreadable.
"You left a trail I couldn't ignore."
They sat beneath a broken arch, guarded only by echoes of what they once were.
The scribe began to record.
And the two men—once master and disciple—began to speak.
Ashen: "Do you remember who you were?"
Caelum: "I remember you teaching me how to kill gods."
Ashen: "And now you serve one."
Caelum: "I serve light."
Ashen: "No. You serve silence wrapped in radiance. You kneel before a sky that never speaks back."
Caelum's jaw tightened.
"Why did you bring me back?"
Ashen answered truthfully.
"I didn't."
"Then why now?"
Ashen smiled, just barely.
"Because destiny has good taste."
They spoke for an hour.
On peace. On power. On the cost of belief.
But there was no treaty. No promise.
Only a pause.
A breath in the heart of war.
At the end, Caelum rose.
"You've twisted minds."
"I've opened them."
"Tahlon will die. You've poisoned him."
"He chose this."
"And Althea? What is she to you?"
Ashen's eyes flickered for a moment.
"…A variable."
Caelum's hand twitched toward his blade—but stopped.
Instead, he said:
"When I strike… I'll make it clean."
Ashen stood.
"That's your problem."
"You still think this is about a strike."
They parted without blood.
But the sky cracked that night.
And in the shadows of the Black Reliquary, Althea watched from a high window.
She had not attended the parley. Ashen forbade it.
But her hands trembled now.
Because when Caelum passed her in the hall…
He looked at her.
And for the first time…
She remembered him.
🔸 Ashen and Caelum: First Meeting – No Violence
🔹 Caelum's Memory: +12% (98%)
🔹 Relationship Triggered: Althea ↔ Caelum – Shared Past Fragment Detected
🔹 Ashen's Emotional Status: Unsettled
🔹 Velmire Stability: Brittle (One Spark = War)
🔹 Divine Infamy: 91
🔹 Tahlon's Blight: Terminal – Countdown Begins
That night, Ashen stood alone in the garden of the reliquary.
Snow finally fell.
Lira approached silently and wrote a question in the ash.
"Will you kill him?"
Ashen answered after a long pause.
"No."
"But I'll make sure he never becomes me."