The smoke from the pylon still wasn't cleared when signal fires began to rise.
Red beacons flared across broken ridges in bad rhythm—one on top of the splintered shell of a Braithborne watchtower, another on the high eastern rise of the crater, where Dominion banners once flew unchallenged. Now they were burned in flame and turned to ash.
Cyril and Miren crouched behind the jagged husk of a boulder. Below them, the earth shook with mobilization—shouted orders, warbeasts loosed from their bone-crates, and the low, gut-deep roar of windbeasts circling like predators. Their tether-lines cracked like whips in the smoke-laced sky.
"Why aren't they regrouping?" Cyril muttered.
Miren's eyes scanned the ridgeline, calculating.
"They're not retreating. They're retaliating."
Above them, the Sunvault still drifted—wounded, its symmetry broken, bleeding magic into the clouds. From its fractured shell, dark-bodied cutters descended, slicing the heavens like obsidian blades. War-built. Death-bound.
Miren tapped his shoulder.
"We can't stay here. If they sweep the ridge, we're done for."
Cyril's eyes lingered on the crater. The pylon was gone—reduced to a glass-ringed scar, still glowing faintly with sealed Flow. But he felt it. That hum in his chest didn't leave just yet. The resonance didn't vanish—it remained, like something unfinished.
"It knew me," he murmured.
Miren stepped in front of him.
"Whatever you felt down there, it's over."
He met her eyes.
"You think it didn't collapse. That it… yielded."
She didn't blink.
"Does it matter right now?"
He hesitated, then nodded.
"You're right. We've got bigger fish to fry."
He shook off the weight of that moment like shedding smoke. She was already moving.
"Let's go," she said.
"Before that thing above decides to destroy the entire ridge."
They vanished into the crevice's shadow, swift as breath.
***
Far south, where Emberhold's scorched highlands met jagged range, Cauldrake Keep stirred—not with fear, but laughter.
In its volcanic halls lined with beast-skulls and scorched banners, a tall, iron-bound warrior lifted his spear. The chamber roared in approval.
Veyr Cindral, Spear-King of Ash.
His weapon, Breachfang, once pierced the heart of a beast monarch. Some said it still whispered lightning. Veyr was one of Emberhold's Four Mercenary Kings—bound by blood, branded by oath.
"It's finally happened!" he bellowed, laughter ringing like forged iron.
"The pylon's down. The Vault bleeds! The Dominion's lost its fangs!"
Around him, his battle-sworn drank deep. The message didn't come by bird or banner—it rang through Flow itself, like thunder rattling through the continent's bones.
War wasn't declared.
It arrived.
At Veyr's side stood Vhara the Stormweaver, her ember-silks crackling with static; Huldan Brak-Eater, a giant who once shattered a mountain spine in duel; and Caeric Blackbrand, silent but searing—his Flow-sight cut through lies like steel.
"We've waited long enough,"
Veyr roared.
"Thirty years choking on treaties, licking crumbs from golden thrones. But that sound in the sky?"
He raised Breachfang.
"That's the sound of a cage breaking."
Vhara laughed like thunder.
"And prey spilling its blood too soon."
"We march west," Veyr said.
"Torch Riverfork's outposts, take their shard-maps before the Braithborne or Dommies lock down on alliances."
Huldan pounded a boulder-sized fist to his chest.
"Then we ride for the crater."
Veyr grinned.
"Not just the crater. The one who sparked it. Let's see if they can finish what they started."
***
Back near the crater, Cyril and Miren reached the ruins of a Braithborne camp.
The sky tore again as a cutter screamed down, anchor-lances cracking into stone. They slipped beneath a burned canopy just as heat shimmered through the air.
"They're not just sweeping," Miren muttered.
"They're scouring."
Cyril crouched beside a shattered banner post, watching the war-line ripple.
"They're chasing a ripple. A rumor."
Miren nodded.
"They think if they strike fast enough, they can choke the flame."
"Too late," Cyril said.
They moved fast—salvaging ash-dyed cloaks to mask Flow traces, wax-sealed spellskins with food, and a crude geomantic charmstone still pulsing with faint ley-patterns.
Near a collapsed command tent, Cyril paused.
"You don't have to stay for this."
"I know."
Miren didn't look up.
"You stayed because of Dren but now? This—this is something bigger then Dren could ever hope to be. I sparked the fires of war, I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to escape the coming heat."
"I didn't stay for Dren. I stayed because you were the only slave that refused to kneel. And now?"
She looked at the smoke-riddled sky.
"Now you're not just surviving."
He blinked.
"What am I doing then?"
She smiled faintly.
"Shaping."
Before he could answer, the charmstone in her hand sparked. A rune lit—far west of the crater, edging the known shardfields.
"Emberhold…" she whispered.
Cyril's brows rose. "New players?"
"They've been waiting decades for this," Miren said.
She rose, tightening the ashcloak around her shoulders.
"And they won't wait much longer."
***
By dusk, Emberhold moved.
Veyr Cindral rode at the front, his horse plated in embersteel, breath steaming like smoke. Behind him, legions advanced—red banners, spell-bound spears, and molten-bound chains.
Their first mark: Tallbarrow Spire, a minor fortress of the Riverfork Compact.
Its rulers believed their walls would hold.
They were wrong.
Veyr did not besiege.
He conquered.
His siegers shattered stone with fire-pulse arrays. Runepriests etched collapse into the bones of the land. When the gates fell, warwalkers made of brass and bound Flow tore through what remained.
Within the hour, Tallbarrow burned.
Veyr stood atop the ruin. Breachfang hung at his side still clean—it didn't even need to be drawn.
"They're slow," he muttered.
Vhara appeared beside him, like a gust of wind.
"They still think this is about borders."
Veyr looked north, toward the crater.
"We know better."
He pointed his spear to the sky.
"Find me the one who cast the first spear. I want to see if their hand still burns."
***
In the eastern woods, Cyril and Miren rested beneath twisted ironbark, its boughs scarred by old Flow.
Cyril stared into the fire. Its flickers danced like echoes of the collapse.
"How far do you think all this will go?" he asked.
Miren rested nearby, arms beneath her head.
"As far as the distance the shard that started it all fell."
He looked at her.
Staring at the still scarred sky Miren suddenly spoke.
"Memory," she said.
"That's what they tried to erase."
She closed her eyes.
"And you stopped them. Now we make sure nobody forgets."
Cyril closed his eyes. The hum was gonebut it's echo lingered in his chest.
Something had begun—and it wasn't stopping anytime soon.