In the physical world, Kaelen lay in the shattered hold of the Valkyrie, his skin cold as the vacuum between stars. To his friends, he looked like a statue of cracked marble, his chest barely moving as a toxic, violet mist curled from his nostrils. But inside the theater of his mind, there was no silence. There was only the roar of a dying universe.
Kaelen woke up in a version of Oakhaven that had been turned inside out and hung from the heavens. The familiar cobblestones of the Rookery were floating in a sky the color of a fresh bruise. The great gears of the industrial district—the iron heart of his childhood—were grinding against the stars, producing a sound like screaming metal. It was a "Mind-Scape," a psychic construct of his memories being systematically dissolved by the Void-energy he had channeled to move the Star-Spire.
"You took too much, little scavenger," a voice rumbled, shaking the floating streets.
Kaelen turned. Standing in the middle of a plaza made of fragmented memories was Ignis. But the dragon wasn't a giant beast here; he was a towering figure of liquid emerald flame, shaped like a man but possessing the presence of a mountain. He wore armor that looked like solidified sunlight, and his eyes were two dying suns, flickering with the same exhaustion Kaelen felt.
"Ignis?" Kaelen's voice sounded hollow, like a recording played in an empty room. He looked down at his own hands; they were translucent, the edges flickering like a flame in a high wind. "The Spire... the fleet... I had to do it. They would have been crushed."
"I DO NOT CHIDE YOU FOR THE DEED, ECHO," Ignis said, his voice vibrating in Kaelen's very marrow. "I CHIDE YOU FOR THE TECHNIQUE. YOU DID NOT USE THE VOID; YOU OPENED YOUR VEINS AND LET THE VOID DRINK. IT IS A PARASITE. IT DOES NOT DISPLACE SPACE—IT CONSUMES THE MEANING OF IT. TO THE VOID, A MEMORY IS JUST DATA TO BE ERASED. A SOUL IS JUST A BATTERY TO BE DRAINED."
Ignis pointed toward the horizon of the Mind-Scape. A massive, geometric tear was opening in the sky—a jagged, obsidian rift that mirrored the Star-Eaters' ships. It was "deleting" the world. Kaelen watched in horror as the orphanage where he had shivered through winter nights vanished into pixels of purple ash. The face of his first mentor, the old blacksmith who had taught him that steel has a pulse, blurred and became a blank slate.
"If that reaches the center," Kaelen realized, a cold dread pooling in his stomach, "I won't know who I am. I'll just be a shell for the power. A puppet for the Hive."
"AND THE ONE-WEEK CLOCK WILL STOP," Ignis added grimly, his green flames flickering toward violet. "BECAUSE THERE WILL BE NO 'YOU' LEFT TO MEASURE TIME. YOU WILL BECOME A PERPETUAL CINDER, BURNING FOREVER IN A COLD VACUUM."
"How do I stop it? I don't have the Scepter here. I don't have anything!"
"YOU CANNOT FIGHT NOTHINGNESS WITH FIRE, KAELEN. FIRE NEEDS FUEL, AND THE VOID OFFERS NONE. YOU MUST FILL THE HOLE WITH SOMETHING THE STAR-EATERS CANNOT DIGEST: TRUTH."
Ignis surged forward with the speed of a solar flare, his flaming hand gripping Kaelen's throat. It didn't burn; it felt like a jolt of pure, unfiltered reality slamming into his nervous system. Suddenly, the Mind-Scape shifted. Kaelen wasn't in Oakhaven anymore. He was standing in a memory he had tried to bury for years—the day he first touched the First Cinder.
He saw his younger self, a boy of twelve, shivering in the freezing rain of the trash-heaps, reaching for a glowing stone to keep warm. He saw every moment of his own weakness: the times he had stolen bread and hated himself for it, the times he had cowered from the Guild's enforcers, the times he had felt so small he wished he could simply vanish. The Void-Tear in the sky began to pulse, fed by this self-doubt.
"JOIN US," a thousand voices whispered from the darkness, sounding like the rustle of dry leaves. "IN THE VOID, THERE IS NO SMALLNESS. THERE IS NO HUNGER. THERE IS ONLY THE ARCHIVE. CEASE THE STRUGGLE, CINDER-HOST. BECOME ETERNAL."
Kaelen felt his feet leave the ground, the gravity of the rift pulling him toward the black geometry. He looked at Ignis, who was being slowly drained of his green fire, his draconic features turning to ash.
"I'm not just a scavenger," Kaelen hissed, his teeth gritting so hard they felt like they might shatter. "And I'm not just a host for your fire, Ignis!"
He reached out, not for the dragon's strength, but for the weight of his own life. He visualized Ria's stubborn defiance as she stood against the Star-Spire. He felt Pip's manic, desperate curiosity and Korg's unshakable, silent loyalty. He realized that the Star-Eaters were a collective of forced order—a hive of identical parts—but his Company was a collective of chosen chaos.
Kaelen's translucent skin didn't just glow; it solidified into a blinding, white-hot Starlight-Steel that pulsed with a heartbeat.
"My soul isn't a dragon," Kaelen roared, his voice merging with Ignis's in a perfect, terrifying harmony. "And it's not a void! My soul is the bridge between the two!"
He didn't push the Void back. He integrated it. He reached into the black tear with both hands and pulled. Instead of being consumed, he used the "First Cinder" to ignite the void itself. He turned the nothingness into fuel. The black geometry turned into emerald glass, vibrating until it shattered into a billion harmless sparkles of light that fell like snow over his mental Oakhaven.
The Mind-Scape stabilized. The city returned, no longer a slum of soot and shadow, but a fortress of gold and green fire, floating in a sky of pure white.
Ignis let go of Kaelen's throat and stepped back, looking smaller, more human in his exhaustion, but his gaze was proud. "YOU HAVE RECLAIMED THE ANCHOR, ECHO. YOU ARE NO LONGER JUST WEARING THE ARMOR; YOU ARE THE FORGE. BUT LOOK AT THE WORLD OUTSIDE. WE HAVE LANDED, AND THE WELCOMING COMMITTEE HAS NO USE FOR KINGS."
Kaelen's eyes snapped open in the physical world.
The first thing he felt was the silence. It was a heavy, pressurized silence, unlike the humming wind of the mountains. He was still in the hold of the Valkyrie, but the ship was tilted at a 45-degree angle. He was surrounded by shattered crates of grain and broken mana-vials.
He stood up, and the floorboards groaned under a weight that felt three times heavier than before. The violet cracks in his skin remained, but they were now bordered by a shimmering emerald light—a containment field he was maintaining with every breath.
He climbed the tilted ladder to the main deck and stopped, the breath hitching in his throat.
The Valkyrie had made an emergency landing in the Glass Deserts of the West. As far as the eye could see, the "sand" was actually pulverized crystal that reflected the bruised purple sky. But they weren't alone. Rising from the dunes were colossal figures made of weathered sandstone and ancient bronze.
These were the Wasted Guardians—the original automaton defenders of Gaea, dormant for ten millennia. Some were the size of houses; others were as large as the airships themselves. They moved with a slow, grinding grace, their eyes glowing with a cold, judgmental blue light.
They had surrounded the surviving Guild troops and the Ember Spark Company. Ria stood at the center of the perimeter, her spear notched with the blue fluid of a guardian she had already been forced to strike. Commander Vane's men had their steam-rifles leveled, but they looked like children holding sticks against mountains.
"Kaelen! You're awake!" Ria shouted, her voice tight with relief and terror. "Don't move! They won't let us pass! They say we're 'Contaminated'!"
Kaelen stepped to the railing of the tilted ship. He didn't look like a scavenger anymore. He looked like a lightning bolt wrapped in human skin.
"I am Kaelen of the Spark," he shouted, his voice carrying across the glass desert like a thunderclap, vibrating the very crystal beneath the golems' feet. "And I am here to open the First Forge!"
One of the golems, a four-armed colossus with a face carved like a roaring lion, stepped forward. Its footsteps caused the Valkyrie to slide another foot down the dune.
"THE SPARK HAS BROUGHT THE VOID," the Guardian boomed in a language of grinding rocks. "YOU ARE THE CARRIER. THE ANOMALY. THE HIVE FOLLOWS THE SCENT OF YOUR SCARS. TO PROTECT THE FORGE FROM THE STAR-EATERS, WE MUST EXTINGUISH THE CARRIER BEFORE THE HIVE ARRIVES."
Kaelen looked at the "One-Week Clock" burning in his mind's eye.
5 Days, 18 Hours remaining.
"I don't have time to be a 'carrier,' and I don't have time to die," Kaelen said, his hand igniting with a flame that was both emerald and violet—a beautiful, terrifying synthesis of both powers. "We're going to that Forge. You can either open the way, or you can become more glass for the desert."
The Prime Guardian lowered its massive stone halberd. "THEN PROVE YOU COMMAND THE VOID, HOST. PROVE YOU ARE NOT ITS SLAVE."