Dawn broke over scorched hills, casting pale gold across the war-torn sky. The wind carried the scent of ash and steel, and beneath it all… the faintest trace of blood.
Althar stood at the edge of a ruined watchtower, cloak fluttering behind him.
Below, an army waited.
Not an army of kings or lords—but of the forgotten.
Disgraced knights. Refugees. Mage-outcasts. Mercenaries with nowhere left to run. Farmers who had lost their homes. Thieves who had found something worth protecting.
They bore no kingdom's crest.
Only a tattered banner stitched with a silver flame and a shattered sword—Althar's mark.
He never asked for it.
But they carried it anyway.
Because for the first time in their lives… someone was willing to stand for them.
Ariya stood beside him, brushing dust from her armor.
"They came for you," she said. "Even after what happened in the City of Chains."
He looked down, watching the soldiers train in the clearing. Some were wielding rusted swords. Others were conjuring crude spells. It wasn't much.
But it was something.
"They didn't come for the crowns," Althar said. "They came because no one else would have them."
Seris approached, her cloak singed from the spellfires she'd been teaching to the younger recruits.
"Word's spreading," she said. "The Crownless War has begun in truth. Three kingdoms declared total mobilization this morning. And there are whispers that the Witch-Empress is gathering her warlocks."
Rorek snorted. "Let her gather. We'll break her like the last one."
But even he knew it wouldn't be that easy.
They weren't just facing war.
They were facing every corner of the world that feared change—and those who wanted the crowns for themselves.
That evening, Althar stood before the army.
No throne behind him. No crown upon his head—though the Seventh still flickered above him, an ever-glowing halo.
The soldiers quieted as he stepped onto a crumbled stone platform.
His voice was calm.
"We are not nobles. We are not chosen. The world has cast us out. And now it marches to crush us."
He paused, letting the silence stretch.
"I won't promise you safety. Or riches. Or glory."
His gaze swept over the crowd.
"But I can promise you this."
He raised a hand—magic sparking across his fingers, not with violence, but with clarity.
"We fight not because we are mighty… but because no one else will. We carry the flame because the world has gone dark. And if we fall—then we fall together."
A roar of voices answered him.
A rallying cry.
Not for a king.
But for a cause.
That night, the scouts returned with grim news.
Three legions were moving south.
Knights of the Crimson Church.
Beast-riders of the Black Claw Horde.
And a detachment of Silver Chain Inquisitors—Veyla's loyalists.
They were converging on the Flameborn Army.
And they'd reach them by dawn.
Ariya looked to Althar. "They're not giving us time to prepare."
Seris scowled. "They want to crush us before we become a real threat."
Althar closed his eyes.
He didn't see war.
He saw people.
Tired. Hungry. Determined.
They had bled for their belief.
And now he would answer that belief with fire.
At midnight, he walked alone to the center of camp.
The Crown of Echoes rose above him, pulsing with ancestral voices.
He heard the old kings.
The tyrants.
The monsters he had once been.
And beneath them, his own heartbeat—slow, steady, real.
For the first time, he spoke to the crown not as a ruler…
But as a man.
"Let me protect them."
The crown flared—and fused fully into him.
No longer floating above.
It burned into his soul.
And something inside him awoke.
A memory not from this life, but the one before—
Of a battlefield soaked in snow.
Of a woman's voice whispering, "You can't save everyone… but you must try anyway."
Dawn came.
So did the armies.
The Flameborn stood shoulder to shoulder—outnumbered, underequipped.
But unbroken.
And at their head…
Was Althar.
No longer cold.
No longer hollow.
No longer just a king.
But a leader.
And as the first wave of the Crimson Church charged, their war priests chanting destruction, Althar raised his blade.
And whispered to the wind:
"Burn."
The world answered.