Kael bled fire.
Every movement, every breath, stoked the embers inside him like bellows to a dying forge. The pain hadn't faded since the trial. It had changed — become deeper, older, as if the fire now reached back through time itself.
The Cinder Witch did not speak for hours after his awakening. She watched, measured, judged. Only once the sun had dipped behind the ash-smothered peaks did she finally speak.
"Come. The forge remembers."
She led him down a narrow path cut into the bones of the mountain, deeper than light dared go. The heat grew unbearable — not the wild fire of Kael's heart, but something ancient, industrial, divine.
At the bottom, they reached the Godforge Core.
The chamber was vast. A cathedral of molten stone and broken relics. Great chains hung from the ceiling, still glowing. Anvils shattered by time lined the walls. And in the center stood the Forge itself — a pit of living magma, bound by runes no living soul remembered how to speak.
Lira and Marren waited at the edge, keeping their distance.
The Cinder Witch pointed to the edge of the pit. "What you carry cannot be caged in flesh alone. The flame chooses more than bodies."
Kael stared at the magma. "A weapon?"
She nodded.
"But not forged by hand. By will."
She drew a line in the ash at his feet.
"You must shape it from memory. Not steel. Think not of what it should look like. Think of what it is."
Kael closed his eyes.
He saw fire, yes — but beneath it, pain. Loss. The weight of carrying a name that no longer belonged to anyone.
He saw Daryn, laughing beside him under the broken moon.
He saw Ashira's pyre.
He saw himself — a boy in chains, a boy in flames.
And something within him responded.
The pit roared.
The magma surged, coiling upward like a living thing. From it emerged a shape — not poured, not hammered, but pulled. Formed from memory, shaped by grief and resolve.
A blade.
Blackened at the edges.
Veined with emberlight.
Serrated near the hilt — not for cruelty, but survival.
He reached out. The blade answered.
I remember you, it whispered.
Kael grasped the hilt. It burned. It knew him.
The Cinder Witch smiled — not kindly, but with a kind of grim satisfaction.
"It is done. The fire accepts you."
Lira stepped forward. "What do you call it?"
Kael looked at the weapon, and without hesitation, replied:
"Ashmourne."
That night, as the wind screamed through the peaks, and the glow of the Godforge faded behind them, the Pale Choir stirred once more.
Far to the north, the Frost-Saint stood atop a frozen spire, watching the stars.
His blade, forged from godfrost and soulglass, trembled.
"The spark has shaped a blade."
Mother Frost's voice drifted on the wind, cold and sweet.
"Then the Choir must sing louder."