Chapter 39 – Echoes of Ash and Blood
The wind was still burning.
Even after the Consortium's squad had vanished into the clouds, the mountain's air carried a strange charge—like the sky itself remembered the battle. Kael stood at the edge of a cliff, his gaze on the horizon, hands still curled into fists.
Beside him, Sareth hovered in emberlight projection form, arms crossed as if he were the one brooding.
"You know," Sareth said, his voice casual and just a bit too loud in the solemn quiet, "for a guy who just uppercut a dragonbone war priest into unconsciousness, you don't look very celebratory."
Kael didn't respond immediately. "They knew where I was. How fast I moved. What I'd awakened. Someone's tracking me."
"No," Sareth said, his ember-lit form flickering with intensity. "They're tracking what's inside you. There's a difference. They can't see you—you're too unpredictable. But they see the echoes."
Lys approached from behind, tying her hair back into a rough knot, a fresh line of bruises showing on her arm. "So? What now? We wait for the next glorified corpse patrol to come knocking?"
"No," Kael said. "We go dark. Disappear."
Sareth clapped his hands—sarcastically, of course. "Excellent plan. Let's just vanish from an organization with access to global leyline scrying, artifact-grade surveillance, and at least three predictive mages who probably wet themselves the moment you sneezed."
Kael turned to him. "You have a better idea?"
"Actually… yes." Sareth snapped his fingers. A glowing, ember-flickered map flared to life in the air. "You need to leave the known paths. No cities. No major ley intersections. Just wilderness and forgotten ruins."
Lys narrowed her eyes. "You're awfully familiar with Consortium blind spots."
"Perks of being a dead man," Sareth replied, his tone a shade darker. "They stopped looking for me a long time ago."
Kael eyed him for a moment. "You ever going to tell me who you were before you became… this?"
Sareth's form dimmed slightly as if the question pulled some weight from deep inside. "Short version? I was a Dragon-Kin artificer. Built weapons for the wrong side. Realized too late my own genius was being used to butcher half the continent. So I betrayed them. Or tried to."
A pause. The wind whistled between stone pillars.
"I buried my body in a sealed forge and split my soul into an Ember Fragment. Kept a piece of myself alive—barely. Enough to wait. Enough to find someone who could finish what I couldn't."
Kael blinked. "Me."
"Ding ding ding," Sareth said. "You're smarter than you look."
Lys crossed her arms. "So what, you're here to make sure Kael doesn't repeat your mistakes?"
"Among other things," Sareth said. "Like making sure he doesn't die like a fool in the first half of his story arc."
He swiped across the map. "There's an old wyrm shrine buried under the Scorching Dunes. I say we start there. It's not on any current maps, and it's saturated with dormant ley-threads. With your Core, you might be able to awaken it—and mask your presence while we plan the next move."
Kael nodded slowly. "How long until we reach it?"
"Two days," Sareth replied. "Maybe less if you ride the stonewinds correctly."
Lys frowned. "And if the Consortium finds it first?"
Sareth's smile turned grim. "Then we burn the sand into glass."
Kael folded the ember map into his memory and glanced back at the charred battlefield. "They think they understand what I am. That this is just power. Magic. Control."
He stepped forward, flames coiling up his arms. "They don't realize yet—I'm not just awakening power. I'm remembering it."
Sareth raised a brow. "Now that's the kind of dramatic protagonist energy I like."
Lys rolled her eyes. "You two are going to be unbearable by the end of this."
Sareth winked. "I'm already unbearable. He's catching up."
They descended into the canyon trail as the sky darkened further, the burnished red clouds overhead reflecting the fading light. Sareth floated a little ahead of them, scanning for magical anomalies, muttering under his breath about faulty ward signatures and "abysmally lazy spellcraft."
"You said you were a Dragon-Kin artificer," Kael said suddenly. "What kind?"
Sareth glanced back. "Third Order Runebinder. Specialization in soul-threaded constructs. I was one of the few who could embed sentient enchantments into weapons without destabilizing them."
"That's rare," Lys said, surprised.
"Yeah," Sareth muttered. "Rare and dangerous. Especially when your clients start asking for sentient swords that like killing civilians."
He shook his head. "When I refused the last commission, they locked me in the Void Crucible. I spent four years planning my escape. It worked. Kind of. I'm dead, but still here."
Kael said nothing. The idea of someone that brilliant, burned down by his own legacy—it hit too close to home.
As they moved deeper into the stone ravine, Lys broke the silence. "Do you ever regret it? Helping them at all?"
Sareth looked at her. For once, no sarcasm. "Every day. But regret's a luxury you don't get when you're already ashes."
They made camp beneath a jagged archway of obsidian. The fire Kael lit crackled higher than usual, dancing around him like it recognized its master. Lys pulled out dried meat and half a loaf of dense trailbread, while Sareth stared into the flames like he could see the past burning in them.
"Tomorrow," Sareth said, "we cross the winds. If we're lucky, no Consortium scouts. If we're unlucky… well, I have a few volatile runes left in me."
Kael leaned back, looking at the stars slowly emerging overhead.
"What if we're not just running anymore?" he asked aloud. "What if we hit back?"
Sareth smiled. "Now that is the Kael I was hoping for."
And far to the south, where the sand began to shift beneath the surface of the Scorching Dunes, something ancient stirred.
Waiting.
Watching.
Remembering.