By sunrise, the world had taken notice.
Mages across the old cities felt it — a shift in the ley lines, a warping of order, as if the balance between life and magic had tilted 3 degrees left. Small. Barely visible.
But in magic?Three degrees is apocalypse.
Amara woke to find a message burned into the chapel door in runes older than language:
Council summons: High Table of Dread, Vienna. No veil. No ward. Come as you are. Come before we decide for you.
Madalena paled.
"The Council hasn't summoned anyone in over four hundred years."
"Then why me?" Amara asked.
"Because," Madalena said, voice like gravel, "you're no longer a participant. You're a variable."
They returned to Vienna by nightfall.
The city was different. Not visibly — the buildings were the same, the streets quiet, the skyline lit. But under the surface, wards buzzed. Every magical line hummed with surveillance. Someone — or something — was watching from every angle.
Amara walked straight into the Council chamber with Lucien beside her, black flame hidden under sleeves that barely contained it.
The High Table of Dread lived beneath the opera house. A circular room carved into ancient stone, laced with living silver and star metal. It pulsed like a heartbeat.
Thirteen figures stood around the edges — veiled, faceless, nameless.
They weren't judges. They were witnesses to things no one else survived.
One spoke, voice echoing in no direction and all directions.
"You burned the Spiral."
Amara nodded.
"You tore the cycle."
"Yes."
"And now the balance tilts."
Another voice cut in — female, clipped, sharp.
"You did not ask permission."
"I didn't know gods took appointments," Amara said coldly.
Whispers circled the room. Some sounded like laughter. Others like mourning.
"You are powerful," one said."But power without direction is corruption."
Amara didn't flinch. "Then give me direction. Or get out of my way."
The whispers stilled.
And then one voice — low, ancient — said:
"Then you must seek the first Flame-Shard. The Blade of Ruhaen. Buried at the edge of the world. If you survive it… we will speak again."
Madalena gasped from the back of the room.
Lucien stepped forward. "That blade was lost."
The voice corrected him.
"It was hidden. For a reason."
"It does not cut flesh. It cuts truth."
That night, Lucien barely slept.
The shadowfire had spread to his chest now, wrapped around his ribs like vines. When he closed his eyes, he fell into darkness — not dream. Memory.
And this time, it was before he was Lucien.
He stood in a field of black snow, his body unfamiliar. Clawed. Horned. His voice wasn't human.
He was a beast in a war of light.
And Nereza stood in front of him.
"You are not meant to love," she had whispered, placing a chain around his neck. "You are meant to end those who do."
Lucien woke gasping.
His chest was scorched. Burned from inside.
Amara knelt beside him, wide-eyed.
And on his chest, burned into his skin, was a new sigil.
Not Spiral.Not Flame.Not Third Path.
But something never seen before.
Amara touched it.
And the room shook.