Lightning swallowed the crater.
The Blighted Coast trembled as bolts danced across the cliffs like divine veins. Stone cracked. Wind howled. The sky bled colors it had no right to.
In the middle of the storm stood Dareth Vale — the Storm Monarch, Unwritten, Forgotten, and Broken.
His voice came from everywhere. It echoed inside Raen's bones.
> "You should have stayed erased."
Raen gritted his teeth, sword humming in his grip.
> "You should have stayed human."
---
CRACK!
Dareth moved like lightning — a blur, a ripple, a god of speed and rage.
Raen barely brought up his blade before the clash shattered the air around him.
The force sent him flying, smashing through charred ruins.
He hit the ground, rolled, and stood — blood trailing down his cheek, sword still in hand.
> "He's faster than before," Raen muttered.
"But he's not thinking."
---
Dareth hovered above the crater, arms out, electricity webbing through the sky like divine threads.
> "They chained me to storms," he roared, "and left my name to rot in thunder."
He raised both hands.
> "So I became the storm."
The heavens bent.
Clouds spiraled.
And a lance of pure skyfire screamed down toward Raen.
---
Raen whispered.
> "Return."
The sword came.
But it didn't drop.
It ascended — rising from the ground in front of him like a blade that had been waiting under the world this whole time.
Golden. Glowing. Alive.
Raen swung.
The sky split.
---
BOOM.
Lightning met flame.
Not normal fire — echofire — the kind that burns memories instead of flesh. The kind that remembers what was lost.
And Raen remembered.
---
Flashback — 7 Years Ago.
A tavern. War-worn and battered.
Dareth laughing too hard. Raen drinking too quiet.
Outside, the world was ending.
> "You know," Dareth said, "if the gods ever kill us, they better erase the evidence."
Raen raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
Dareth grinned.
> "Because if the world remembers us… it might rise back up."
---
Present.
Raen roared and charged forward.
Their blades collided — one of steel, one of storm.
Clash after clash.
Strike after strike.
The crater became a battlefield of ancient pain and forgotten oaths.
And as their blades locked once more, Raen screamed:
> "I REMEMBER YOU!"
---
Dareth's eyes flickered.
Blue.
Then white.
Then back again.
> "Stop… calling me back…"
"You don't know what they did to me…"
> "Then show me."
Raen dropped his guard.
One moment of trust.
One opening.
Dareth's blade stopped inches from his heart.
---
The storm paused.
And Dareth… fell to his knees.
> "I couldn't stop it," he whispered. "I kept waking up… in different storms. My name kept getting shorter. My voice — gone."
Raen knelt beside him.
> "It's not gone," he said quietly.
"You just forgot how to use it."
Dareth's hands trembled.
> "Raen… I thought I killed you."
Raen looked up at the sky.
> "They tried. But you know me."
> "I'm too stubborn to die properly."
---
Lightning faded.
The crater stilled.
And for the first time in years, Dareth Vale breathed as himself.
---
But peace never lasts.
A new sound echoed across the cliffs — not thunder.
Wings.
Dozens of them.
Descending.
Silver-armored figures in white cloaks and emotionless masks.
Each one carrying a glowing weapon carved with runes of law.
At their center, floating above the ground, was a woman cloaked in pure light — her eyes closed, her hands folded in prayer.
> "We found them," she said.
> "Two Unwritten. Active. Remembering."
The Arc Keepers had arrived