The wind carried the scent of something old—older than dust, older than death.
Nael paused atop the jagged ridge, the world falling away beneath him in shattered cliffs and a yawning valley of black stone. The stars above flickered like cold, dying eyes, casting a pale glow over the ruined temple below. It stood alone in the wasteland, half-buried in ash, its doors broken, its spires bent like mourning figures. The sigil on its arch still burned faintly: a flame spiraling into a thorn.
He remembered it.
Not in words. Not in facts. But in that ache behind the ribs—where memory and guilt curled like coals.
"This is it," Elaria whispered beside him. Her voice was tense, but reverent. "The Shrine of the Bound Flame. No one has set foot here in centuries."
Nael didn't answer. His gaze was fixed on the relic that awaited within: the Emberheart. The final remnant of the God of Sacrifice.
A god Nael may have once called brother.
They descended in silence, boots crunching on scorched stone. The air was dry, yet it pressed against them like steam from some invisible furnace. The further they walked, the heavier it became—like walking into grief itself.
Nael placed a hand on the temple's entrance. The stone pulsed faintly under his palm, as though it recognized him. Or feared him.
The doors gave way with a groan. The dark swallowed them.
Inside, the world became colorless. Walls of obsidian, etched with ancient sigils now cracked and bleeding faint light. Statues lined the hallway, their eyes blindfolded, their hands cupped around invisible fire.
Elaria moved slowly, eyes wide. "This was a place of mercy… I can feel it. But something here… has turned cruel."
Nael stepped ahead, drawn like a moth to a memory. In the center of the chamber, floating above a fractured altar, was the Emberheart.
It hovered silently. A coal-shaped gem the size of a fist, glowing with inner flame—flickering, dim, yet alive. The light was not warm. It was full of sorrow.
The moment he stepped closer, it began to pulse.
thrum… thrum…
And then it spoke.
Not in words. But in pain.
The vision came like a flood.
A battlefield of skies. A god with wings of golden fire kneeling in chains. A sword—Nael's own—driven into the god's chest.
"I begged you… to let them live."
The voice echoed in his soul. A face formed—blurred, weeping, burning. The God of Sacrifice.
Nael had killed him. Not in hate. But in duty.
He collapsed to his knees, chest heaving. The Emberheart was screaming now—not in sound, but in soul-deep anguish. It remembered its death. And it wanted Nael to remember too.
Elaria rushed to him. "Nael!"
He couldn't hear her. The memory dragged him deeper.
He was standing again, barefoot on a floor of flame. Before him knelt the god—chained, bleeding, golden tears on his cheeks.
"Please, Aurelion," the god whispered. "If I die… no one will carry the burden. You'll have to remember for all of us."
"I will," Nael had said. His own hand trembled on the hilt of the sword.
The sky burned above them. The war of gods had reached its crescendo. Sacrifice was the only way to stop it.
And so Nael had killed the last one willing to bleed for the others.
He had buried the god of mercy with his own hands.
He came back gasping. His face was wet. Elaria held him, eyes wide with fear—but also sorrow.
"You saw it, didn't you?" she said quietly.
Nael nodded, jaw clenched. The Emberheart pulsed slowly now. It had given him its truth. Its memory.
And now, it would follow him.
Without another word, he reached out—and the moment his fingers brushed the Emberheart, it sank into his chest like a falling star.
His body arched with the heat. His veins burned. But he didn't scream.
Because deep inside, beneath the torment… he felt the first ember of something else:
Resolve.
He would find the others. One by one.
He would learn who he was—who he had been.
And if he had truly been a monster…
Then he would bury the gods again—
Starting with himself.
The fire faded slowly from Nael's veins, leaving behind a searing echo—like the afterimage of lightning on the soul.
He stood in silence at the center of the ruined shrine, chest still faintly aglow. The Emberheart had vanished from sight, but he could feel it inside him now—burning gently beneath his ribs like a second heart.
Elaria approached carefully, her steps uncertain.
"You absorbed it…"
Her voice trembled with awe, and fear.
Nael didn't look at her. He was staring at the altar—now cracked completely in two. Where once there had been an object of worship, now there was only ash.
"No," he murmured. "It absorbed me."
The silence that followed was heavy.
Outside the broken walls, the wind howled over the wastelands like a lament. Elaria wrapped her arms around herself, trying to shake the cold—not from her skin, but from the revelation that clung to Nael like a second shadow.
"You were one of them, weren't you?" she said quietly. "A god."
Nael didn't answer. He could still hear the voice—the whisper of the god he had killed. The name Aurelion burned on his tongue like a curse he wasn't ready to reclaim.
He turned to Elaria, his voice low. "I don't know what I was. But I remember what I did."
She looked at him for a long moment. "Then we need to find the next shrine. And the next memory."
He nodded. But deep inside, a fear had begun to grow—deeper than death, sharper than guilt.
What if the memories only get worse?
They left the shrine behind as dawn began to bleed across the horizon—a dull red glow behind the black mountains, like a wound trying to heal.
Nael walked without speaking, each step feeling heavier. The Emberheart pulsed inside him in rhythm with his heartbeat, quiet for now, but watchful.
They reached the edge of a cliff as the sun rose. Below, in the valley, lay a graveyard of stone giants—colossal statues shattered and buried under centuries of rubble. Once divine guardians, now nothing but relics.
Elaria stared down in silence. "The gods truly ruled the world once."
Nael closed his eyes. "They didn't rule. They were… chained to it."
She glanced at him. "You mean by mortals?"
"No. By duty. By choices they couldn't escape. Mercy. War. Balance. Flame."
He turned to her, his eyes dark.
"They weren't free, Elaria. None of us were."
They camped that night beneath the skeletal remains of one of the fallen titans—a headless colossus, its arms outstretched as if pleading with the sky.
Elaria kept the fire going. Nael sat apart, lost in thought, staring into the flames.
"Do you ever regret it?" she asked gently.
He didn't answer at first.
Then: "Every breath."
A long pause.
"But I think…" He looked up, his eyes reflecting the firelight. "I think I was right to regret it. That's what makes me different now. That's what keeps me from becoming what I was."
Elaria offered a small smile. "Then maybe the world still has a chance."
Nael lay down that night with the stars above him, cold and silent. As he drifted toward sleep, the Emberheart stirred again—its warmth not cruel this time, but mournful.
A memory flickered behind his eyes.
A city in flames. A woman with silver eyes kneeling before a god. A child taken. A promise broken.
Nael gasped awake.
But it was too late.
The memory was real. And it was his.
He curled his fists into the dirt.
"There's more," he whispered.
There was always more.
And somewhere out there, the next Relic waited—another piece of his broken divinity. Another truth that might crush him… or remake him.
The next morning, the sky was unnaturally clear—almost too perfect, as if reality itself were holding its breath.
Nael and Elaria traveled through the cracked ravines of the Forgotten Barrens, guided only by fragments of instinct and the distant, pulsing echo of the Emberheart buried in his chest.
Nael didn't need a map. The relic inside him called to something ahead—something that waited, hidden beneath centuries of silence.
Another memory. Another god.
Another grave.
They arrived by dusk at a place not marked on any chart.
A field of obsidian crosses. Each one carved into the ground, as if hammered there by divine rage. At the center stood a spire of white stone, untouched by time, glowing faintly as the sun set behind it.
Elaria shivered. "What is this place?"
Nael walked ahead, silent. He already knew.
This was Judicium. The place of divine judgment.
Where the God of Light had been executed…
By his own kind.
He stepped into the circle.
The moment his foot touched the threshold, the air ignited. The world vanished in a blaze of white, and Nael was no longer in the present.
He stood in the memory.
Surrounded by gods in a circle of flame, each bearing a weapon. One of them—a man of pure light, robes glowing like morning mist—knelt in the center, his wrists bound by radiant chains.
The God of Light. Sereth.
He was weeping.
"This is mercy," a voice declared.
Nael's own.
He watched himself step forward, sword in hand, and plunge it into Sereth's chest.
The pain hit like a tidal wave.
Nael collapsed to his knees in the present, gasping, the fire inside him raging.
Elaria was screaming his name, grabbing his shoulders, but he couldn't hear her.
He was trapped in the light.
But this time… he saw more.
Sereth, the God of Light, had not betrayed them. He had spoken the truth. Warned them. Begged them to stop the war. And for that—Nael had silenced him.
"We chose silence over truth," Sereth had said.
"And silence is what will bury us all."
When the vision faded, Nael found himself alone inside the stone spire. Elaria stood at the entrance, watching with wide, anxious eyes.
The room was empty—except for a single mirror.
Nael approached it, trembling.
In the reflection, he didn't see himself.
He saw the god he had been: Aurelion. Clad in celestial armor. Eyes as bright as stars. Expression hollow.
A god without hope.
He raised a hand to the mirror. It rippled—then cracked.
And from the shards emerged a new flame.
A second relic.
It entered his chest like the first, and this time, the pain was different. Not fire—but light. Cold, and piercing.
It lit up every lie he had buried, every guilt he had ignored.
He fell to his knees and wept—not for what he had done…
…but for what he had believed was right.
When Elaria helped him stand, she whispered, "What did you see?"
Nael's voice was broken. "That I killed not just gods… but hope."
She didn't speak. She just held him.
And as night fell across the silent field of obsidian, Nael made a vow—not to reclaim what he once was…
…but to become something the gods had never been.
Free.