The storm rolled in like a living thing.
Not wind. Not water.
But silence.
A void carved into the world, devouring sound, snuffing light, curling trees into grotesque, clawed silhouettes. The birds had fled. The wolves had burrowed. Even the shadows seemed to cower beneath their own weight.
In the heart of it walked the Harbinger.
It did not breathe.
It did not speak.
It did not bleed.
It simply moved like a needle pulling through the fabric of the world, stitching threads of darkness behind it, unraveling all that dared remain whole.
It was not always this way.
There had once been a name, a soul, a body made of flesh and bone. A man beneath the steel and curse.
But the Order had torn that away.
And Kael had burned what little remained.
Now the Harbinger was nothing but purpose.
And that purpose pulsed in its chest like a buried star.
It had been close.
Too close.
The girl had awakened.
Her fire had rejected the mark.
Worse she had remembered the city.
Veltharys.
The place of first loss. First betrayal.
The place where the Harbinger's own life had ended.
Not in death.
But in unmaking.
He remembered now. Flickers. Impressions. The garden domes. The echo of her laughter across water. The sick weight of chains around his arms as the fire claimed her.
Kael had chosen the flame.
But the Order had chosen him.
And now…
Now the girl bore both legacies.
And she would destroy everything unless he stopped her.
He stood still at the edge of the cliff, the valley yawning below like a broken mouth.
Flames burned far in the distance remnants of the battle at the ruined tower. Sarya's awakening had torn through the forest like lightning.
But it wasn't the fire that stirred him now.
It was something else.
Something… wrong.
The wind shifted.
The stars dimmed.
And something ancient whispered beneath his skin
"The Sleeper stirs."
The Harbinger's body spasmed.
Not from pain.
From recognition.
He had not heard that name in over a century.
The Sleeper.
The rival.
The failed crown.
They had once been forged together two vessels, two weapons. Raised side by side in the flamepits beneath the Obsidian Sanctum. But where the Harbinger had submitted, been shaped, refined into precision—
The Sleeper had rebelled.
It had bitten the hand that shaped it.
And in doing so, it had been sealed, buried, and forgotten.
Until now.
The Harbinger dropped to one knee, clawed fingers carving runes into the stone beneath him.
He dragged a talon across his chest, splitting the leather and chain, revealing the ruined core where his heart had once been.
A mirror embedded in bone.
It rippled.
Flared.
And then showed her.
Not Sarya.
Not Aelira.
The Sleeper's face.
Hair like duskfire. Eyes like cracked stone. And a grin that did not belong to the dead.
She was still in the vault.
But not for long.
The Harbinger rose.
His joints snapped, realigned. The wind howled through the wreckage of his hood, revealing half a face a cracked mask fused with withered flesh, a jaw that no longer moved when he spoke.
"You were always the weak one," he said to the air. "You forgot your place. I will remind you."
He turned east.
Not toward Kael.
Not toward Sarya.
But toward the Sanctum.
The land between was not kind.
But kindness was not required.
He moved in long, fluid strides, unbothered by the terrain. Trees warped around him. The earth trembled with each step. He passed through a village in silence and silence remained. The people there would never scream again.
The stars above shifted.
Something moved with him.
No longer just shadow.
But flame.
Corrupted.
Bent.
Whispers followed him now.
The dead who had touched the old magic.
The ones who remembered.
And beneath them all, a single voice rose through the ash
"You are not the only monster we buried."
By the time he reached the Hollow Spires, the air itself had changed.
There, wrapped in spindles of black stone and silver ash, lay the last threshold between the world and the deep vault.
The guards stationed there had no warning.
They were trained to die.
They did.
Effortlessly.
No blades were drawn.
Only shadows.
And silence.
In the heart of the gate chamber, the Harbinger stood before the sealed door woven in chains of salt and soulstone.
He raised a hand.
And touched it.
The door did not resist.
It welcomed him.
Because once, long ago…
The Harbinger had been its key.
Below, the Sleeper stirred.
Chains snapped like brittle twine.
Flesh realigned.
The sarcophagus wept molten tears.
And something opened its eyes in the dark.
The Sleeper smiled bloody, broken, unapologetic.
"I wondered when you'd come, brother."
The Harbinger said nothing.
He only stepped closer.
The chains still twitched around the chamber, grasping in panic.
The Sleeper rose, bones cracking, spine stretching, her smile widening.
"Still playing pet to the Order?"
The Harbinger reached for her throat.
But her hand caught his first.
The vault shook.
Not with power.
With memory.
Their shared past cracked open like a wound.
Two children, side by side, learning flame before they learned language.
Two experiments, one bound to purpose, the other abandoned to madness.
Two weapons, but only one ever used.
And the other…
Left to rot.
The Harbinger struck.
The Sleeper caught his arm, twisted, and threw him into the wall.
The chamber split in half.
Flame and darkness clashed blue fire against black ash.
She didn't fight like Kael.
She didn't fight like Sarya.
She fought like something that had once loved power, and had been punished for it.
She fought to burn everything down.
The Harbinger stumbled back, armor cracked, his mirror heart glowing faintly.
The Sleeper grinned.
"You don't scare me, shadowboy."
A pause.
Then she leaned in.
"But she does. The girl. Sarya."
He tensed.
She saw it.
And smiled wider.
"You think she's still controllable. Still malleable. But I've seen her flame. It doesn't bend. It consumes."
She reached out traced a fingertip along his ruined mask.
"She'll burn you. Just like she burned him."
The Harbinger hissed.
And vanished into smoke.
When the vault was empty again, the Sleeper stood alone.
She cracked her neck.
Rolled her shoulders.
And laughed.
"Well then," she said to the shadows, licking blood from her lip.
"Let's go meet the girl."