Some realms die with silence. Others rage against the heavens until their final breath. The Ember Realm chose fire over surrender — and Kael was about to learn why.
The Ember Realm wasn't supposed to still burn. By all divine records, it had collapsed a century ago during the Second Severing. Yet, as Kael stepped through the rift, he was met by a sky bleeding fire — not rage, not destruction, but something far more dangerous.
Grief.
"It's crying," Kara whispered, shielding her face as waves of radiant heat rolled over them.
Even Ress Fen, normally sarcastic and aloof, was quiet. "This place… it remembers."
Kael's boots crunched over blackened glass — once stone, now crystallized under divine heat. Ghost-town ruins stretched across the horizon, fractured and frozen mid-collapse. Homes stood partially melted. Statues wept magma tears.
This wasn't a battlefield.
It was a grave.
"I made this."
The thought came unbidden, sharp as a blade of guilt. The fragment in his chest pulsed — not with power, but recognition.
The party followed the memory-fire deeper into the realm. Along the way, they passed flickering visions, each flame showing pieces of the past — Aeon and Soryn arguing atop the Pillar of Remembrance.
"If we sever the 13th Realm, it'll kill balance—""Better one dead realm than all collapsing!" Soryn snarled. "You think you're a god of unity, but your unity demands obedience."
Kael's jaw tightened. Soryn was right in his own twisted way. I forced peace through sacrifice. And Ember paid the price.
He felt the realm watching him, not with hatred — but with expectation.
As they reached the ruins of the Pillar, once a colossal tower of flame and song, they found it buried under volcanic stone. Only its tip remained, barely peeking through smoldering ash. But in its shadow stood a figure.
Soryn the Ash-Priest.
Or what was left of him.
Once golden and flame-bound, the former disciple had become a walking cathedral of scorched prayer — molten chains wrapped around his body, eyes glowing like dying suns. His voice echoed before he even opened his mouth:
"You returned, Father."
Kael stepped forward. "Soryn. I came for the Fourth Fragment. And for an answer."
Soryn's laugh cracked the earth. "You want truth? Truth burns. You taught us that when you left us to die."
The duel began without a signal.
Soryn struck first, flame-constructs erupting from the ground, spitting incandescent rage. Kara summoned frost runes to counter, but they melted before forming. Ress tried to flank, but was thrown back by a psychic hymn of pain.
Kael stood in the center of it all, unmoved.
I can't fight him like before. Wrath won't win here. Guilt will.
He activated Crucible Drive, letting the pain amplify his flow. Flames licked his skin — and he welcomed them. Then came Throneless Reign — the realm trembled as he partially ascended, wings of forgotten memory spreading behind him.
But Soryn didn't falter.
"You fused with Wrath. You took the fragments. But you still don't understand. You didn't seal the Ember Realm to save us, Kael — you sealed it to forget."
The battlefield twisted.
The sky inverted. Fire turned to liquid memory. Kael saw it then — his own hands closing the gates of Ember, Soryn begging at his feet, thousands of disciples behind him burning.
"Forgive me."
His own words echoed back to him, hollow.
Back in the present, Kael knelt, momentarily overwhelmed by the truth. Soryn raised a blade formed from petrified soulflame — the Ash-Epitaph — and descended upon Kael.
But Kara blocked it.
Her cry shook the sky. "You want Aeon? You'll have to kill us all first!"
Soryn's blade carved through her arm — not fully, but enough. She screamed. And Kael snapped.
He didn't fight with rage.
He fought with memory.
Kael activated Infinite Memory Loop. For the first time, not just combat instinct but emotional choices from past lives surfaced. He let them guide him — Aeon's hope, Aeon's regrets, Aeon's defiance.
Soryn hesitated. "You're not him."
"No," Kael replied, rising. "But I remember who he wanted to be."
Their final clash shattered the summit of the Pillar. Echo Nova detonated at point blank, fused with Crucible Drive. The resulting explosion painted the sky in white flame.
Soryn dropped his weapon.
"I… I tried to keep the Ember burning. So someone would remember you."
Kael caught him before he fell.
"I do now."
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[Fragment of Memory: Acquired]
New Passive: Emberheart — Survive death once per day, resurrecting with a burst of flame.New Trait: Soulbrand: Echofire — Wounds dealt become memory scars. Enemies relive their failures.
As the realm finally quieted, the skies cleared — just slightly. A wind blew for the first time in decades.
Kara, weak but smiling, looked up. "That… felt like closure."
But Ress pointed toward the edge of the horizon.
Where something new was rising.
A structure of obsidian and ice, floating above reality — a realm not listed in any divine record.
Kael's flame pulsed again.
Not with memory.
With dread.
[End Of Chapter 17]
Because not all memories are yours. Some are planted — by something that wants you to remember wrong.
Next Chapter Preview: Chapter 18 – The Ash-Priest and the Pillar of Remembrance
The team descends into a realm of forgotten futures, where fate itself is imprisoned in stasis. But what they find isn't prophecy — it's a trap. A prison built for Aeon by something older than the gods. And waiting at the center is a voice Kael hasn't heard since his first death…
The Oracle who betrayed him.
And she's been waiting to finish what she started.