The wind smelled of old blood and forgotten promises.
We marched east, where the horizon trembled under a bruised sky. Every step forward felt heavier, like the world itself was trying to pull us back into the past.
My son led, silent and burning.
Ashen and Lucas flanked him, weapons drawn, power thrumming under their skin.
Ashara walked beside me, her hands trembling around her scrolls, ink staining her fingertips. "The closer we get," she whispered, "the more the leyline folds. Time is unraveling."
"I know," I said, my voice low.
Because I could feel it too the way the air tasted of endings.
The final battle wasn't days away.
It was hours.
And somewhere beyond the ridgeline, Dakarai waited for us, no longer a ghost in memory.
But a king standing atop a throne built from everything we had forgotten.
We reached the Ashen Plateau by nightfall.
The land here was dead.
No grass. No trees. Just blackened stone and broken bones buried shallow beneath the dust.
