The Fire King was dead.
His followers scattered to the wind like ash, and Kael stood once again before the edge of ruin—this time not as a conqueror, but as a guardian. The plateau where the final battle took place was now a blackened scar across the desert, a place no one would return to willingly.
But Kael knew something was unfinished.
There were still too many questions—too many pieces of the First Flame unaccounted for.
---
It was Narek who brought word.
"The tomb has been found," he said, eyes wide. "The Emperor's true resting place. Not the one we buried him in. The one he prepared for himself. It's beneath Azrana."
Kael didn't ask how he knew.
He simply prepared to descend.
---
The entrance was hidden behind the oldest part of the palace ruins, beneath what had once been the Emperor's personal chapel. The descent was steep, the air heavy with the stench of old stone and sealed secrets.
Bael and Liora followed closely.
The stairs ended in a circular chamber—walls lined with obsidian, carved with imperial runes and burning stars.
At the center lay a sarcophagus of dark steel, adorned with gold and ancient symbols of fire.
But the lid had already been opened.
---
"He planned for resurrection," Narek whispered, staring at the sarcophagus. "Not metaphorical. Actual. Through the Flame."
Liora circled it, blade drawn. "But he's dead. You killed him, Kael."
"No," Kael said, voice low. "I stopped the man. But this… this is something else."
Inside the sarcophagus was not a body, but a husk—bones blackened by flame, and around it, fragments of stone… and a second shard of the Heart.
Kael stared at it, the heat radiating off it like a living thing.
"The last piece," he said.
---
That night, Kael sat by a dying fire outside the palace ruins. In his hand, the shard pulsed faintly—alive, yet asleep.
"What will you do with it?" Liora asked.
"Seal it. Somewhere it can't be found. Ever again."
Bael grunted. "You're just one man, Kael. You can't carry this burden forever."
Kael nodded slowly.
"Then I'll train others to guard it. A circle. Sworn not to power, but to protection. They'll outlive me."
"And if someone finds the vault?" Narek asked.
Kael stared into the flame.
"Then they'll find a warning carved in stone. In every language. And if that fails—"
He looked up.
"Then they'll find the tomb of a man who chose not to be a god."
---
A month later, Kael disappeared from public life.
The shard vanished with him.
Some say he buried it in the deepest dunes of the Sunken Sea. Others claim he gave it to the winds, let the desert swallow it. A few even whisper that he still walks the sands, unseen, watching.
But all agree on one thing—
The empire died with him.
And something better rose in its place.