The ruins of the ancient city loomed ahead — a shattered skeleton of glass and rusted steel, its towers leaning drunkenly against the blood-colored sky.
Shadow rode into the city's bones without slowing.Ashborn's flames sputtered slightly — something about this place felt wrong.Older.Hungrier.
He passed collapsed highways, overturned armored vehicles, the silent remains of wars long forgotten.Carved into the sides of the ruins were strange symbols — ancient sigils glowing faintly in the growing dusk.
Shadow slowed.
From the shadows, he felt it — a gaze.
Not hostile.Not yet.
Carefully, he pulled Ashborn to a halt and dismounted. His boots crunched on broken glass and dust.
And then he saw her.
A figure standing atop a wrecked statue — a woman wrapped in tattered cloth and armor made from scavenged relics. Her face was hidden behind a cracked mask shaped like a bird's beak, and in her hands, she held a strange staff topped with a flickering crystal.
She spoke, her voice like a dry breeze through bones:
"You bear the curse of the First Flame."
Shadow said nothing, but his hand drifted to the hilt of his sword.
The woman tilted her head.
"I am Eve," she said."I know why you ride. I know who you seek."
Shadow's fingers tightened slightly.Many had claimed knowledge before.All of them had died screaming.
But Eve did not fear him.
She stepped down from the statue lightly, her feet barely stirring the dust.As she approached, Shadow saw the truth — around her neck hung a relic... an ancient medallion, bearing the mark of the Architects themselves.
She had been one of them.Or at least, touched by them.
Eve stopped a few feet away, lifting her mask.
Her eyes were not human.They were burning gold — ancient, sorrowful, powerful.
"If you want to destroy them," she whispered,"you will need me."
The golden flames in her eyes flickered, but she didn't flinch.
Around them, the dead city groaned in the rising wind — a sound like thousands of lost souls sighing through broken towers.
Finally, Shadow spoke, his voice rough as grinding steel:
"Talk. Fast."
Eve smiled, but it was a sad, broken thing.
"The Architects you hunt," she said, "are not gods. They are parasites. They stole their power from a deeper source — a source I was once part of."
She tapped the medallion hanging around her throat. It flared briefly, casting sharp shadows across her face.
"I was bred for them. Raised to serve. But I saw through the lie."
Shadow's grip on his sword loosened slightly. A survivor. Like him... but twisted into something else.
Eve stepped closer.
"You think fire and rage will be enough?""They created you, Shadow. They know your every scar, your every weakness."
The flames along Ashborn's tires guttered slightly, disturbed by the growing storm.
"What are you offering?" Shadow asked.
Eve's golden gaze hardened.
"A path into their heart. A way to kill what cannot die."