A tempest brewed behind them as they departed the capital.
The Imperial Courtyard, formerly a testament to heavenly order, lay in ruin. The atmosphere hummed with broken Essentia, and the crippled Oracle had been carried off in quiet, his heavenly connection still interrupted.
Kael did not turn back.
He could not.
Each step removed from the Veinspire resembled unwinding the chain encircled around his soul.
Alongside him, Seris ran silently, her red cloak streaming like a comet's tail. The hidden tunnel she'd learned from pilfered maps brought them out through abandoned catacombs under the Old Scholar's Ward, long since closed by the Circle.
They came out in the wastelands outside the outer wall, dust-covered cliffs where only scavengers and mad prophets dared live.
Kael dropped to one knee as soon as they were out of view.
Seris fell beside him. "You used too much. You're bleeding Essentia."
He coughed, and strands of silver mist drifted from his lips. "It wasn't only power. I remembered something… someone."
Seris supported him, holding his arm. "What did you see?"
Kael shut his eyes, and for an instant, the world changed.
Memory.
Not a dream. Not a vision.
A lifetime past, the Soulforger stood before a legion of shattered warriors, faces marred, eyes blazing with divine rage. They weren't cultivators. They were rejects, those the heavens had judged unworthy of fate.
And Kael, no, he led them, a black fire burning in his chest.
"We do not bend," he said to them. "We are not chosen. We choose."
He had forged something there. Not merely rebellion. A path.
Kael gasped back into life.
"They pursued me," he croaked. "In my previous life… I led them."
Seris's voice fell. "That road wasn't lost. Not completely. There are still rumors of a sect past the Scorched Peaks exiles, rebels, and oath-breakers. They are known as the Ash-Born."
Kael rose to his feet slowly, regaining strength.
"Then there we go."
And deep within the Imperial Sanctum…
Emperor Virel stood before the Echo Basin, an obsidian pool that mirrored not water, but destiny.
"Confirm it," he demanded.
A stoic seer approached, laying the broken sun mask of the dead oracle within the basin. Ripples of gold across black.
"He carries the Mark of the Breaker," the Seer spoke in solemn tones. "The Soulforger has returned."
Fists clenched at his side.
"Seal the capital. Engage the Warden Protocol. And call for the Inheritor."
The Seers shifted uncomfortably.
"My Emperor… summoning her will awaken old debts."
Virel spun, his eyes burning with untempered authority. "Then let the debts bleed."
Wind howled across the broken horizon. Ash billowed in clouds from the broken earth, and even the sun looked reluctant to shine through the smoke.
Kael wrapped his cloak closer; the cold lanced deeper than any wound.
Seris indicated a stone monolith in front of them, in the shape of a sword thrust into the ground.
"That's the mark. If the Ash-Born still live… this is their border."
Kael moved forward, putting his hand on the stone.
It was warm.
A pulse resonated up his arm, ancient, sorrowful, and sentient.
You have come back, it whispered. But are you still worthy?
The earth opened.
Seris leapt back as the ground gave way to expose a tumble of shattered stairs leading into burning darkness.
Kael did not wait.
The Ash-Born did not welcome them with torches and acclaim.
They welcomed them with swords.
Kael parried the first blow, turning to a defensive position. Seris hacked low with her staff, shoving two combatants back.
Out of the darkness stepped a woman, her face covered by a half-burned mask. She was stifling—unadulterated power shrouded in battered metal and recollection.
"I am Ceyla Korr," she stated. "Blight-General of the Ash-Born, you wear the Breaker's Brand. Show me it is not a deception."
Kael stood up.
"I recall you."
Ceyla cocked her head. "Do you?"
"In my former life… you vowed to obey me. You fought at my left when we broke the Sky Citadel."
Quiet. Then laughter.
"Well," she said. "Let's see if your soul knows how to fight."
She attacked.
Not with slovenliness or uncertainty, but with the rage of a person betrayed by time itself.
Kael did not block. He flowed with the strike, deflecting the power, like ink around steel. His hands glowed with the same runes he had called upon to face the Oracle.
Their punches rang like thunder through the empty chamber, past and present meeting in rage.
Then, after one last spin, Kael attacked not with a fist, but with his voice.
"I am Kael Thorne, Soulforged Sovereign. I do not ask for your loyalty."
He opened his arms, energy flowing from each line on his body.
"I ask for your freedom."
Ceyla stumbled.
The hall of the Ash-Born was nothing like Kael had envisioned.
It wasn't a rebel camp or a shrine to revolution.
It was a grave.
Walls were inscribed with names not cut, but burned into rock. The flickering braziers stretched long shadows on obsidian floors, and above them all, a painted ceiling depicted a lost sky: constellations that last saw the light during the Soulforger's downsway.
Ceyla walked ahead in silence.
Kael followed her, every step ringing out over centuries of lost rebellion. Seris came behind, fingers running over the wall, reading each name. Warriors. Martyrs. Rebels. Traitors.
It was of no consequence to the gods.
"Why have you sustained this for so long?" Kael inquired softly.
Ceyla halted under a mural of a massive war, a figure shrouded in silver flame standing against star-birthed titans.
"Since they burned your corpse and cast your ashes upon the Holy Plateau."
Kael placed a hand upon the mural. His face, his former face, was carved there, eyes rebellious even in death.
"I failed all of you," he whispered.
Ceyla spun. "Don't ever say that."
He stood before her, taken aback.
"You didn't fail," she whispered. "You taught us we could shatter the shackles, that we didn't have to bend the knee. You died… but the fire you started did not."
Kael looked at her, understanding breaking in the stillness between beats.
"You loved me."
She didn't glance away.
"I still do."
Silence.
Seris, observing in the background, swallowed hard. It wasn't jealousy; she understood this was never about love.
It was about heritage.
About the man Kael once was… and the one he was required to become once more.
Ceyla stepped forward, placing a delicate crystal into his palm. Within it, a small sigil drifted, a rune crafted of Kael's own past essence.
"We held this back from your fragment of soul," she explained. "It's what sustained the Ash-Born—a fraction of your will."
Kael wrapped his fingers around it, and as soon as he did,.
Memory flooded.
He stood on a cliff of molten glass.
Everywhere about him, the sky churned with Essentia storms. Ten divine monsters circled, fangs mountain-sized, eyes galaxy-wide.
Behind him, the Ash-Born massed.
And beside him… Ceyla. Armor battered, bleeding from a hundred wounds, yet still upright.
"You don't have to stay," he told her.
She smiled, a bloodied and cracked thing. "I don't have to. I choose to."
Then the gods fell.
And Kael bellowed defiance at the sky.
—
The memory dissolved.
He stood in the present again, breath short, skin glowing with faint divine resistance.
"Your fire's still there," Ceyla said softly. "It just needed air."
Kael nodded.
And then something changed in the air.
A shudder.
Seris raised her head toward the outer room. "Someone just shattered a suppression seal."
Ceyla's eyes grew narrow. "Impossible. Only high-ranking cultivators could even track us down."
A bolt of fire scorched through the corridor, and from it emerged a figure in black armor bound in holy chains. Her eyes burned with unnatural radiance, and behind her poured a cloak of white fire.
Kael felt it at once.
Divine Class. Ninth-Tier Cultivator.
Not merely a seer.
Not even merely an Inquisitor.
She was an Inheritor.
The Empire's last hope.
Ceyla swore under her breath. "That's her. The Hallowed Daughter. The Emperor's adopted heir."
The Inheritor's voice sliced through the hall like a blade dipped in judgment.
"Kael Thorne, soulforged or not—you are a threat to order. By the will of the Emperor, your soul is condemned. Surrender, or be redeemed by flame."
Kael took a step forward, the sliver of his past still throbbing in his hand.
"I've trodden this path before," he said. "And every time, I make the same choice."
He spread his arms.
"Freedom."
The Inheritor lifted her hands, and the chamber erupted with divine fire.
Ceyla acted in an instant, a wall of black shields materializing.
Seris sprinted to the side, sending sigils into the air.
Kael stood firm.
The fires hit.
And halted.
Midair.
Frozen.
No—reversed.
Kael's form blazed as Essentia warped around him, reforming by instinct.
One step ahead, and the rock underfoot fractured.
A second step, and the celestial flames were destroyed.
The Inheritor's gaze narrowed. "How…"
Kael's voice boomed.
"Because I am not of your order. I was never held captive by your heavens. I am Kael Thorne, Breaker of Chains, Soulforged Sovereign."
He upraised his palm.
Symbols of rebellion, creation, and defiance spun into a spear of blacklight.
"And you…"
He launched the spear.
"…are in my way."
It struck her mid-chest, hurling her backward through three layers of enchanted stone.
She vanished in a cyclone of light and dust.
Kael lowered his arm, his body trembling.
Not from fear.
But from memory.
"More will come," Ceyla said, breathless. "You've lit the fuse."
Kael gazed upwards at the ruinous ceiling, where one gap let in a glimpse of stars.
"Then let it burn."
The other warriors retreated.
Then one after another they fell to their knees.
Not to a god.
Not to a tyrant.
But to the man who rebelled against them both.
Seris crept forward, gasping.
"You just recruited the Empire's worst nightmare."
Kael faced her.
"No," he whispered.
"I just gave it hope."