The Nightingale was quiet.
Too quiet.
Even with the Dusk Key now secure in Lyra's chest, something had changed. The moment the Shadowborn revealed the Voidlight Key, an invisible thread seemed to pull tighter around the crew's fate.
Kaelen stood in the engine corridor, hands braced against the cold alloy walls. He wasn't thinking about the Ashmirror anymore. He was thinking about him.
The masked man.
A Shadowborn.
Kaelen had heard the name only once before.
Whispered by the Warden in a moment of fear.
"They are not Starborn or Flamebound," he had said, "they are unwritten — the echoes of the Realms that were erased from the flame's memory."
In the medbay, Kaela stirred.
Her eyes opened, glowing faintly with pale flame. But it wasn't just the Ember spark anymore. It was… tainted.
Lyra noticed immediately "She's changed."
"She touched the Ashmirror too long," Riven muttered "It left a mark."
Kaela sat up slowly, scanning them, her voice distant "He's hunting."
Lyra stepped closer "Who?"
Kaela's eyes locked onto hers.
"The one who came before fire."
"Solarian."
Silence fell.
Kaelen whispered the name "That's impossible. Solarian is a myth."
Kaela smiled weakly "So are you. And yet, here you are."
They gathered in the war room.
Lyra, Kaelen, Kaela, Sera, Riven, and Aeris.
The map flickered in spectral fire — showing the twelve Realms, and a thirteenth: a broken ring labeled only as Nullspace.
"Before the flame," Kaela explained, "there was another force. Not light. Not shadow. Something older."
Kaelen frowned "Void?"
"Worse," Aeris said suddenly "Unwritten. Not destroyed — forgotten. Removed from existence so thoroughly that even their memory became poison."
She looked at them all "That's what the Voidlight Key is. A shard of what reality deleted."
Lyra's voice was calm but tense "Why bring it back now?"
Kaela's voice cracked "Because you've ignited the flame that can rewrite it."
Everyone looked at Lyra.
She said nothing.
Because deep down, she knew.
That night, while the others rested, Lyra sat alone in the observation chamber.
The Dusk Key and Ember Key pulsed together in her chest, forming new patterns, new pathways.
She reached inward.
And she saw it.
A vision not of the past — but of a possible future.
A throne made of starlight and bone.
A figure sitting on it — faceless, cloaked in smoke and mirrors.
And before them knelt her — flame dim, hands bound in shadows.
The figure spoke with a voice that echoed like time breaking:
"You will burn the Realms to cleanse them."
"And from the ashes, I will return."
She woke with a gasp, sweat running cold down her spine.
The Shadowborn hadn't come to warn them.
He came to initiate something.
A countdown.
The Nightingale set course for the Twinscar Peaks, one of the few remaining places with an ancient Beacon — a Starforge Node untouched since the beginning of the Ember Era.
They needed answers.
And answers were always buried deep in the places even flame feared.
Kaelen joined Lyra at the helm.
"We're going after him, aren't we?" he asked.
She nodded "We have no choice. If the Voidlight Key awakens the Nullspace…"
He finished her thought.
"…we lose more than the Realms."
Far beyond them, in a fortress carved from black glass, the Shadowborn stood before a circular gate.
The Voidlight Key pulsed.
And from the gate, something began to stir.
Not a creature.
Not a god.
A name.
One no longer spoken by stars or fire.
Solarian.
And his eye… began to open.