Some doors should never open. Others were never meant to close.
Far beneath the Raventide Expanse, where the desert sings with whispers of lost empires, lies the First Grithar Gate—an obsidian maw veiled by an illusion so old even the gods forgot it.
Tharion Vex did not.
With a blade carved from a Void Leviathan's rib and a choir of soul-flayed monks chanting in reverse tongue, Tharion carves through the final seal.
Reality trembles.
"This world stole my throne," he says as the gate splits open. "I will reclaim it in the name of the Forgotten Fire."
Inside, it breathes.
Not air.
Not sound.
Memory.
The gate is a wound in time, leaking the forgotten futures of failed timelines.
And Tharion feeds it a name—Kael Vaelorian.
Meanwhile, Kael marches with an army that is less a force and more a miracle.
Named The Ashborne, they are misfits bound by fire and purpose.
Lia, bearing the Blade of Silent Storms, now bonded with a wind wraith.
Ihlon, once a disinherited noble, now commander of the Vanguard Phalanx.
Eryssa Varn, a seer who speaks in riddles and wields a staff grown from the spine of a dead tree-god.
Graal, the Ironblood Centaur who swore a debt-bond to Kael after he spared his kin.
They are not just fighting for survival.
They fight to reshape the world.
The Ashborne reach the Hollow Divide, a shattered canyon that guards the path to the Gate.
Waiting are Tharion's heralds:
The Veilborn, humanoid shades that bleed starlight.
Ash Choir Knights, whose voices turn bone to glass.
Mor'Khan, the Void-Touched Wyrm—once a sky serpent, now a harbinger of endings.
Kael leads the charge.
He moves like prophecy fulfilled, each swing of his blade unraveling the constructs of unholy magic. Lia dances like lightning, cutting through shadows. Ihlon holds the flank against impossible odds, shield cracked but never lowered.
Eryssa chants a forbidden truth—turning enemy spells against their casters.
But the price is high.
Over three hundred Ashborne fall.
Kael buries them with fire.
And vows never again to let war be waged without cause.
They arrive too late.
Tharion stands within the opened gate, his body half-wreathed in voidlight, half in molten silver flame.
He has become something other.
Behind him, the First Memory steps forth: a being of smoke and regret, shaped like a man, cloaked in writhing timelines.
It speaks not in words but in lost moments: Kael's childhood, his mother's face, the feeling of warmth before he understood what destiny meant.
It tries to unmake him with grief.
Kael nearly succumbs.
But then he sees Tharion's face—twisted, triumphant.
And Kael says:
"You can steal memory. But not meaning."
He roars, and the Godflame within him surges.
His flames are not orange—they are white, the color of beginnings.
He steps into the Gate.
And punches the First Memory in the heart.
Kael's strike doesn't kill the creature.
It breaks the echo it rides.
The timelines fracture—the Gate cracks.
Reality resets for a breath.
Tharion screams in rage as the entity retreats back into the void, snarling.
Kael stands, bloodied but unbroken.
He places his palm on the gate's rim and says a prayer to no god—only to the world.
"Seal it. Forever."
The Gate slams shut.
But not before a whisper escapes:
"Six remain. You have only delayed the Unmaking."
As the Ashborne mourn their dead and tend to their wounded, Kael retreats to a cliffside overlooking the battlefield.
Lia joins him.
He asks: "How many more?"
She replies: "Enough to break us. Not enough to stop us."
They share a moment—hands brushing, breath syncing.
They are soldiers, yes.
But also children of prophecy, and rebels against fate.
Kael closes his eyes.
He can feel the other Grithar Gates now—like tumors in the skin of the world.
The real war is just beginning.