The trees parted like weary sentinels.
Mist clung to the ground as Evelyn and Torren descended the ridge, the trench widening into a basin where the forest had collapsed into a scorched hollow. Cracked stone and dead root formed a skeletal cradle—and in its center lay the Warden.
Or what remained of one.
The creature was vast, humanoid in silhouette but impossibly inhuman in scale. Its body was plated with fragments of living stone, scorched sigils, and moss-veined metal. At one time, this construct had breathed light. Now, it barely twitched.
The chest cavity had been ripped open.
And within it: a shattered core.
Pale, fractured, pulsing faintly like a dying ember. The pieces hovered midair, resisting collapse. Threads of light stitched between the fragments, flickering erratically. Power leaked from it, soaking into the ground like blood.
Evelyn dropped to her knees.
Torren stood frozen. "What in all the gods' names happened here?"
The Warden's head turned—only slightly. But it moved.
It lived.
A low sound issued from its throat, like a storm forced through a reed. Its mouth didn't open, but a voice emerged, not heard so much as felt.
"You... are not my kin... yet you carry the song."
Evelyn blinked. "You can speak?"
"Fractured. Too late. The enemy twisted the breath. I failed the flame."
The Warden's fingers, each the size of a man's forearm, shifted toward its core. "Take it. If she sings to you... then burn. Burn bright."
Torren grabbed her arm. "Evelyn—don't. That thing isn't sane."
The Warden twitched violently. A spray of ash burst from a crack in its arm. Its life—whatever essence powered it—was collapsing.
"I'm not letting it die like this," Evelyn whispered. "It called to me."
"No one can hold a broken core. It'll destroy you."
She looked at him—truly looked—and something in her eyes made him release her arm.
Evelyn stepped forward.
The heat near the core was unbearable. Her skin blistered as she reached out, but she didn't stop. The shard embedded in her chest—residual from the earlier contact—responded to the fractured pieces hovering before her.
A harmonic hum filled the air.
The core began to spin.
"You were born to burn," said the voice from her dreams.
Evelyn reached into the pulsing storm.
And everything shattered.
Her vision fractured. Sound became light. Heat became memory. She was falling—no, rising—through a tunnel of song and flame, memories not her own rushing past:
A battle at the edge of the Hollow.A silver-eyed woman carving sigils in a ruined city.A child with a burning crown.
She screamed, but no sound emerged.
The core did not enter her.
It awakened what had been there all along.
And somewhere deep within, Evelyn saw herself—not as she was, but as she could be: fire-touched, hollow-eyed, and singing in a voice that cracked the world.
Then blackness.