"He's lying."
Kael's voice cut through the silence like steel on bone, cold and deliberate.
Arvyn's words still lingered in the air: "There are five more. And they're waking."
Aurea spun toward her father, blood still drying along her temple, heart thundering. "Five more what? Kings? Like him?"
Arvyn's expression didn't waver, but there was something haunted behind his eyes. "Worse."
The ground beneath them shivered. Not with motion, but with presence. Something ancient stirred beneath the layers of frost and stone, as though the act of binding the Frostwrought King had cracked open more than just a coffin.
Kael stepped between Arvyn and Aurea, sword half-drawn. "You told us he was the only one sealed here. You said this was a single tomb—"
"I believed it was," Arvyn said, his voice rising. "I didn't know he was a sentinel."
"A what?" Riven's voice was low, dangerous.
Arvyn's eyes flicked toward the sealed coffin. "Not the King. The key."
Eryan groaned, leaning against the ice-wreathed wall, blood trailing from his sleeve. "Great. So we just unlocked the front door."
Arvyn nodded. "And there are five more prisons across the continent. Buried in forgotten places, beneath cities, beneath oceans, in places no map dares name."
Aurea clenched her fists. The heat in her glyph responded, coiling around her fingers. "And you want us to seal them all."
"I don't want you to." Arvyn's gaze settled on hers. "I need you to."
Suddenly, the air screamed.
It wasn't a sound. It was a memory, forced into existence—echoing across time.
The coffin behind them cracked down the middle, not open but bleeding light. Not ice. Not flame. Something far older. A sigil appeared, etched in silver that slithered like smoke.
Eryan was the first to react. "Get back!"
Kael lunged, grabbing Aurea by the waist and pulling her behind the shattered pillar just as the sigil burst into brilliant, blinding fire.
It wasn't just a glyph. It was a beacon.
High above the cavern, miles above the surface, the sky split.
Somewhere, far in the east, something answered.
A low, mournful cry carried across the wind. The sound of a tomb unlocking itself.
Aurea's blood went cold.
Riven's eyes widened. "That wasn't here."
"No," Arvyn whispered. "That was Cindervault."
"Isn't that…" Kael began.
"A dead volcano," Eryan finished grimly. "No one's been there in centuries."
Arvyn shook his head. "There were cities built around its roots. One still sleeps beneath the ash. If the bindings fail, it will rise. With it, one of the five."
Aurea stood slowly. Her face was pale, but her voice was fire. "Then we go there."
"Now?" Riven asked. "We can barely stand."
She met his eyes. "If we wait, it wakes. Fully. And we'll lose the chance to stop it before it spreads."
Eryan gave a dry laugh. "I hate that you're right."
Kael sheathed his sword with a grunt. "Then we move. Before the next coffin opens itself."
They turned from the coffin, from the dead King, and began the long climb back to the surface.
---
Two Days Later — The Edge of Cindervault
The air smelled of burnt stone and old blood.
The path toward the crater's rim was strewn with obsidian and bone, cracked and twisted by long-dead fires. No wind stirred. No birds called. The silence was waiting.
Aurea reached the top first, breathing hard, skin sticky with sweat and soot. The crater was vast and yawning, ringed with black rock and shadows that shimmered faintly, as if watching.
Kael stepped up beside her. "No signs of life."
Eryan crouched, brushing his fingers through the ash. "Just death that hasn't decided it's done yet."
Riven unslung a pair of glass lenses from his pack, scanned the base of the crater. "There. South-east quadrant. Something's carved into the stone."
They moved quickly, quietly, every step disturbing centuries of dust and history. The heat grew oppressive as they descended, a phantom pressure coiling around their lungs.
As they reached the marking, Aurea's breath caught.
It was a glyph.
Not one of theirs.
It pulsed faintly, a sickly green hue laced with crimson threads. Beneath it, in a circle of scorched basalt, stood a girl.
She was barefoot, her hair falling in tangled waves to her waist, wearing nothing but a robe of stitched ash and ember. Her eyes were the color of molten gold—and they were staring directly at Aurea.
"I've been waiting," she said.
The others drew weapons.
Aurea stepped forward.
"Who are you?"
The girl smiled. It was not a kind smile. "I am the second. The Ashborn. And your fire belongs to me."
Without warning, the girl raised her hand—
—and the ground exploded.
A wave of molten glass surged outward, catching Eryan and Kael mid-move. They dove aside, coughing from the heat. Aurea threw up a shield of flame just in time to stop the first strike.
Riven vanished in shadow, reappearing behind the girl with a dagger drawn.
Too slow.
She turned without looking and caught him by the throat.
"Your darkness is young," she hissed. "I was born in the last sun."
She flung him into the crater wall. The impact cracked stone.
Aurea screamed, lunging forward. The two fires collided—hers golden, radiant, built from a thousand days of trial.
The Ashborn's? Endless. Consuming.
Their flames twisted together in a war of heat and hunger.
"You were never meant to carry it," the girl said, voice a dozen echoes. "You're a candle in a hurricane."
"I'll burn you alive," Aurea snarled.
The girl smiled.
"Try."
The ground beneath them cracked.
A figure began to rise from the ash.
Twice the size of a man. All magma and jagged metal.
The second King was waking.
And the Ashborn stepped aside, eyes glowing.
"He's yours to fight," she whispered. "If you survive, I'll take what's left of you."
And then she vanished into smoke.