The voice echoed like thunder through the mountainside.
Kael stepped forward, snow swirling around his feet. Liora stayed behind, her staff gripped tight, but she didn't retreat. Her eyes scanned the shadows with growing unease.
From the wreckage of the ancient cathedral, the wyrm emerged.
Its body was serpentine, its scales cracked like scorched earth. Wings hung from its back in tatters, and its maw glowed with sickly green fire. But it wasn't the size or the scars that unsettled Kael—it was the eyes.
There was no soul left in them.
"Who commands you?" Kael demanded.
The wyrm laughed, a cruel, rasping sound that shook snow from the crumbling towers.
"No one commands the hollow," it said. "We are the forgotten. We are the castoffs of your reign."
Kael's jaw tightened. "You were once one of mine."
"I was everything you wanted," the wyrm hissed. "I devoured your enemies. I razed the mortal cities you feared. And when the gods cursed you, you abandoned us. Left us to rot in your ashes."
Kael took another step. "What's your name?"
The wyrm's voice dropped to a whisper.
"I had one. Before I became this. But it was lost in the fire… and in the silence that followed it."
Liora whispered behind him. "This thing… it remembers everything."
"It was once a general," Kael replied. "One of the last."
"You would reclaim Vareth Tal?" the wyrm spat. "You, who betrayed fire and chose flesh?"
"I would end what I began."
The wyrm paused.
"Then prove you deserve the ruin you left behind."
Kael stepped into the courtyard of broken flagstones, and the wyrm descended in a spiral of claws and smoke. Liora moved to the edge, her hand sparking with faint green light—but Kael raised a hand.
"Don't interfere."
"You're still injured—"
"It knows me," he said. "I owe it this."
The wyrm roared and lunged, jaws wide.
Kael ducked beneath the first sweep and rolled across the stone, landing hard on his shoulder. His human body could barely match the strength he once commanded with a flick of his tail.
But he wasn't without fire.
As the wyrm coiled to strike again, Kael reached inside himself—not for heat, but for memory. He whispered a word, ancient and forgotten, one of the last vestiges of his true name.
The air shimmered.
His hand lit with golden flame, the only remnant of the power that once made kingdoms bow.
Kael drove his fist into the wyrm's side.
The creature screamed. Smoke poured from the wound. It reared back, surprised—angered—not by pain, but by recognition.
"You carry the ember," it growled.
"I carry enough," Kael replied.
The wyrm lunged again, but Kael leapt—high, impossibly high—and landed on its neck. He whispered another word, and his fire flared.
The wyrm crashed into the cathedral wall, and rubble rained down.
When the dust cleared, Kael stood alone in the center of the courtyard. The wyrm lay still, its body slowly turning to ash.
Liora rushed to his side.
He staggered, then collapsed to one knee.
"You nearly died," she whispered.
"I have died," he muttered. "This body just hasn't caught up yet."
They entered the ruined cathedral together.
Vareth Tal's throne room was shattered, half-buried in frost. The obsidian throne still stood, cracked but upright, a symbol of everything Kael had been.
Kael didn't sit.
Instead, he knelt before it.
"I ruled through fear. Through power. And it brought nothing but ruin."
Liora watched him in silence.
"I won't make the same mistake again," he said.
She placed her hand on his shoulder.
"No one expects you to be who you were. Only who you choose to become."
He looked up at her.
"I choose to fight for this world, not rule it."
From behind them, a rumble echoed.
Not from the mountains. From below.
Kael's expression shifted. "Someone's opened the deep vaults."
Liora frowned. "Vaults?"
"There are things buried here," he said slowly. "Things even I locked away."
The stone floor beneath them trembled again.
And far below, something stirred.