"When your house is burning, you don't plead with the flames.
You flee.And you find water.Even if it lives in the mouth of a monster."
—Amine Toku, before his exile
A Letter Left Behind
To Mira,Don't follow me. If they know you helped, they'll bind your memory too. They'll make you believe I was just a boy who died in a fire.Tell Seluin I'm not angry. Just done waiting for permission.
I'm going where their laws don't reach. Where names are worn like masks. Where dragons speak in riddles and ancient mages weep in stone.
The war is coming.And I won't face it with half-truths and buried guilt.
—A.T.
North of the Broken Sky
The land beyond the Mage Council's reach was not marked on maps.
It was whispered about by name only in circles of flame:
The Fracturelands.
A torn landscape stitched together by leyline scars and ancient curses.
Here, the wind was sharp with memory.
And everything—everything—watched.
Amine crossed the threshold at dawn.
Behind him: order, betrayal, and silence.
Ahead: wild magic, myth, and danger.
But also—answers.
The First Ally: The Mirror Drinker
Deep in the valley where light never fell the same way twice, Amine found it.
The creature had no fixed shape.
It appeared as a boy, then a beast, then a girl with no eyes.
But always, it reflected him.
"What do you seek, summoner?" it whispered.
"Truth. And power," he replied.
"To fight?"
"To choose not to."
The creature grinned. "You are rare. Most seek allies to conquer. You seek them to understand."
Amine nodded. "Will you help?"
The Mirror Drinker melted into fog. "Only if you survive the next three days. Alone. No monsters. No spells. Just you."
And so he walked into silence.
And suffered.
And remembered what it meant to be weak again.
And on the third day, the Mirror Drinker returned.
"You passed."
The Second Ally: The Last Dream-Fire Dragon
Atop the Shattered Glass Hills, where reality bent under the weight of forgotten dreams, slept a dragon without a name.
Long ago, she had been sealed—not by humans, but by her own kind.
For dreaming of peace.
When Amine reached her, he didn't draw his weapon. He knelt.
"I don't want to slay your kin," he said.
"I know," she replied. "But they will still try to slay you."
"I need your fire."
She tilted her massive head. "To burn?"
"To forge," he answered.
She laughed—a sound like molten stars cracking open.
"You are a strange mage. Ride me then, and I will test your soul in flame."
The Third Ally: The Gateborn Child
In the ruins of Elun-Ra, where time flowed in circles, a child wandered alone. She sang to herself in an ancient tongue.
No one had aged in Elun-Ra for over two hundred years.
The child stopped when she saw Amine.
"You're not from here," she said.
"Neither are you."
"I was born when the Gate cried," she told him. "I don't die. I only remember."
He asked her to join him.
She said nothing.
Instead, she touched his hand.
And in a flash, he saw—
The First Gate screaming open.The Hybrid's birth.The Council's lies.Dragons weeping fire.And himself, holding the key to end it all.
"I will follow you," she said at last.
"But only until you lie."
He didn't promise anything.
Only nodded.
Elsewhere: The Council Watches
Velnir threw the tracking orb against the wall.
"He's passed through three restricted zones. The Fracturelands. The Flame Hills. Elun-Ra."
"Alone?" Selvarin asked.
"No. Not anymore."
"He's building something."
Velnir stared at the smoking map.
"No. He's unbuilding us."
Meanwhile: The Hybrid Moves
At the edge of a sunken city, the Hybrid stood with his army—more of them now. Mages burned by betrayal. Dragons marked as traitors. Humans twisted by Gate corruption.
They wore no banner.
Only scars.
He looked north.
"He seeks allies," whispered one.
"Let him," the Hybrid replied.
"I seek the forgotten kings."
"And when he returns?"
The Hybrid's voice was like cracking stone.
"Then we will speak.Not as enemies.But as the last children of a broken god."