The wind shifted.
It carried with it the faint stench of ash and something older—like scorched bone left too long under a red sky. Aric halted mid-step, his eyes narrowing on the horizon. Ahead, the Shadelands stretched in crooked shadows and poisoned soil, but it wasn't the land that unsettled him—it was the silence.
No crows. No rustling wind. Just a breathless stillness.
Kael raised a hand, signaling a halt. Selene's fingers instinctively hovered over her dagger.
"We're being watched," Kael muttered, his voice low.
Aric closed his eyes briefly, reaching out with that strange awareness he'd started to understand—not sight or sound, but something else. A pressure behind his mind. A presence.
"They're close," Aric whispered.
A faint clicking echoed from the ravine to their right. Then another. Then dozens.
Figures emerged from the mist. Thin, humanoid things with skin stretched too tight over elongated bones. Their eyes glowed faintly blue, and they moved in unison—like marionettes pulled by the same cruel hand.
"Wraithborn," Kael said grimly. "They're not supposed to come this far north."
Selene swore under her breath. "Guess they didn't get the message."
Aric stepped forward, the runes along his arm flaring to life with a dull, red glow. But something was wrong. The power surged inside him, but it felt… unstable. No, not unstable—unwilling.
As if something within him was waiting.
"Aric," Kael warned, stepping beside him. "Now would be a good time to burn something."
The Wraithborn hissed as one and charged.
Kael and Selene met them head-on. Steel clashed against bone, daggers spun, spells ignited. Aric raised his hand to join the fray—then froze.
A voice echoed in his mind again, clearer than before.
"You seek to command what you do not yet own."
Pain lanced through his chest. He gasped and fell to one knee, clutching his ribs as a symbol flared to life above him—one that did not belong to Malrik.
Kael shouted his name.
Aric raised his head.
The earth beneath him cracked, and from it erupted a sudden wave of red-black energy that slammed into the nearest Wraithborn, dissolving them into dust. The rest recoiled.
But Aric hadn't meant to do it.
He staggered to his feet, eyes wide with horror. His veins pulsed with unfamiliar energy—not Malrik's power. Not the throne's. Something else entirely.
Kael stared at him, breathing heavily. "What… was that?"
"I don't know," Aric said, voice shaking. "But it wasn't him. It wasn't Malrik."
Selene's eyes narrowed. "Then who?"
Before he could answer, the skies overhead rippled—literally rippled, as though the heavens themselves were fabric being pulled tight. A single crack of thunder split the world, and from that fracture, a shadow stepped forth.
Not Malrik.
Someone taller. Cloaked in gray, with eyes that shimmered gold and silver like twin dying stars.
He didn't speak, but the world seemed to grow quieter in his presence.
Aric felt his knees almost buckle again—not from pain, but recognition. He knew this figure. Somehow.
The stranger tilted his head.
"You've awakened the Second Flame," he said, voice like rain on iron. "But you're not ready for the Third."
Then he vanished in a blink of smoke and silence.
Kael didn't speak for a long time. Neither did Selene.
Aric finally exhaled and whispered, "What's the Third Flame?"
And somewhere deep inside him, something laughed. Not cruelly. Not kindly.
Just… knowingly.