The ruins groaned as Kael and Elira climbed the long, spiraling stairwell back to the surface.
But the air had changed.
The warmth that once clung to the Ember Throne had turned cold—not natural cold, but the kind that settles in bones when a door best left sealed has been opened.
When they emerged into the open air, they stopped dead.
The sky was wrong.
Ash floated where sunlight should have poured. A gray haze coated the treetops. The wind howled like it remembered their names.
Kael gripped Elira's arm. "This wasn't here before."
"No," she whispered. "Something's been unleashed."
They descended the ridge to find the village of Brimvale below its outer cottages scorched, livestock gone, smoke drifting from the inn's roof. People wandered aimlessly, hollow-eyed, muttering as though in trance.
Children cried without reason. Dogs barked at empty air.
And at the center of the square stood a figure draped in tattered robes—hooded, faceless, unmoving.
Kael drew his sword. "Not again."
Elira grabbed his wrist. "Wait."
The figure raised a hand—not in threat, but in offering. Beneath the hood was a mouth carved from stone, and from it came a voice that echoed through their bones.
> "You broke the seal.
The Third has awakened.The balance falters.
Choose your ending.Then it vanished.
Dust to dust.
Kael stared at the empty space where it had stood. "What the hell is happening?"
Elira turned toward him, pale and shaken. "The pact didn't just test us it woke something else. And now the trials won't stay buried."
Kael looked around the village, then at the sky above.
It had begun to snow.
Only… it wasn't snow. It was ash.
Elira took his hand. "Whatever's coming, it's bigger than us."
Kael nodded grimly. "Then we find the source."
Behind them, the ruins pulsed once, faintly, like a second heartbeat.
And far away, in a city long swallowed by mountains, an ancient throne cracked open for the first time in 1,000 years.
The Final Trial had begun its count.