The veil of dawn cast strange shadows on the summit of the Ember Vault's outer cliffs, where the wind howled like a grieving widow. The air was thin, searing with the heat of sulfur and old embers, but Ais did not falter. Cloaked in a storm of soot and silent flame, she stood at the edge of the world, the Frozen Inferno sheathed at her side. Her silver eyes scanned the obsidian ridges that plunged into the misty unknown, and her breath, visible in the cold-fire air, moved like a ghost through the dark.
Each gust of wind tangled her white-gold hair, as if trying to draw her back from the edge. But her gaze remained unshaken, fixed not on what lay before her—but on what stirred within. The blade at her side had not been silent since she claimed it. Its whispers had become bolder, more urgent, threading themselves into her thoughts like vines through ancient stone. Each day it grew louder, pressing its ancient will against hers, daring her to fall or rise.
Behind her, the rhythmic crunch of boots on gravel announced the arrival of her companions. Cayn, his armor now scorched and dulled by the Ember Trials, emerged first, eyes narrowed from the climb. Mireya followed, spectral and silent, her dark cloak fluttering like a raven's wing. Her presence, as always, was less a sound and more a feeling—an uncanny cold that curled around one's bones, a warning echo of a forgotten winter.
Neither of them spoke as they reached her. The silence wasn't just reverence—it was a shared breath held tight by a deeper fear. Ais didn't look back. She didn't need to. She could feel their thoughts as if they were her own.
The Frozen Inferno's voice coiled around her consciousness like smoke:
"Blood remembers, even when the soul forgets."
The sword remembered wielders before her—ancestors shaped by duty and drowned in betrayal. It remembered frost-bloods who ruled with mercy, and flame-heirs who razed kingdoms with a glance. It remembered the split—when her lineage fractured into prophecy and chaos. But most of all, it remembered her—the woman in red.
Ais whispered to the wind, "Sister."
But the wind did not answer.
They camped in the ruins of an ancient sky-temple. Once a beacon of elemental balance, now its domes lay cracked, and its glyphs faded into charred marble. Mireya traced runes in the ash, weaving a crescent ward of pale blue fire. Cayn kept his watch from a broken tower, war-scope in hand, his silhouette jagged against the bleeding sunset.
Ais sat before the altar—its face long since weathered into a jagged crown—and touched the stone. Her fingers pulsed with heat. Flashes returned. Memory, not dream. A hall of banners burning, a voice in prayer, and a queen's crown passed in secret through trembling hands. Her mother's voice echoed like distant thunder.
"My mother feared what I would become," she murmured. "So she buried parts of me—like cursed seeds scattered across the world. Hidden. Locked."
Mireya knelt beside her, hesitant. "You're saying there are more... fragments?"
Cayn turned from his perch. "You think this is just memory, or something more?"
Ais's eyes shimmered with frost and fire. "It's awakening. Not just in me. In the land. In the bloodlines. In the throne itself. These fragments—these memories—they're not just history. They're keys."
Mireya's expression turned grave. "And if these fragments aren't reclaimed?"
"They fester," Ais replied. "And so do I. The world rots with each passing day that the throne remains empty, unbalanced."
They moved at first light. The sky above the Vale of Hollow Kings was crimson, like an open wound across the heavens. The vale stretched below them, a sepulcher of monarchs lost to time. Towering thrones, each carved from mountain stone, loomed half-swallowed by blackwood roots. Names of dynasties whispered from every rock and ruin, voices too old for memory but too proud to vanish.
As they descended beneath the boughs of a massive tree whose leaves bled sap like wine, a figure emerged from the shadow. Clad in armor of scale-black obsidian and draped in ceremonial crimson, the figure blocked their path, unmoving.
Her voice, when it came, echoed with command. "Daughter of Serath. You are summoned by the last council."
Ais kept walking. "There is no council. Only ghosts clinging to forgotten crowns."
The figure removed her mask. The face beneath it was familiar in a way that pierced.
"I am Varin," she said. "Daughter of Vael. Blood of your blood. The council needs you to claim your right."
Cayn's grip on his blade tightened. "A trap."
"No," Ais said, studying Varin. "Truth walks alongside lies. But even truth has its price."
Varin's voice cracked. "They will anoint a false heir if you do not stand."
Ais turned her gaze to the distant throne etched in the mountainside. "Let them. I wasn't born to sit. I was born to burn."
"Then burn with purpose," Varin said, her tone more plea than command.
Ais hesitated—for only a breath. "Purpose is forged in fire."
That night, the dreams returned with sharper teeth.
She wandered through a hall of shattered mirrors. Each reflection showed a different version of herself—some crowned, some burning, some screaming into voids. In the deepest mirror, a small girl stared back—chained in a throne of frost, her tears of fire evaporating before they fell.
"You left me," the child said.
"I forgot," Ais whispered.
"No," the girl wept. "You chose to forget."
The mirror shattered. Her blood hissed where it hit the ground. Pain echoed in her marrow.
She fled the dream but awoke to its echo.
Cold breath clouded the air. Mireya stood watch.
"The wards—" Mireya began, but Ais was already rising.
Cayn was gone.
A scream tore across the vale.
They ran.
At the edge of a sacred pool surrounded by withered statues, they found him. Cayn stood motionless, his eyes wide and unblinking. Runes crawled up his arms like vines of flame. His lips moved without will, whispering a word again and again:
"Queen... Queen... Queen..."
Ais approached, her heart a storm of ice and fury. "Who did this?"
He lifted a trembling hand and pointed to the water.
There, beneath the surface, a figure floated.
The woman in red.
Watching.
Smiling.
The Frozen Inferno pulsed in its sheath.
Ais stepped to the edge, the pool steaming around her feet. Her voice cut the night.
"I am not afraid."
The woman's smile deepened. "You should be."
Then she vanished.
Cayn fell to his knees, smoke pouring from his mouth. Mireya caught him, tears in her eyes.
"He's alive," she said. "But changed."
Ais turned toward the looming throne carved into the mountains.
"No more shadows. No more games."
She drew her sword.
And the mountain trembled in response.
Far above, the throne of frost-fire began to glow.
A new storm was rising.