Kael didn't descend.
He fell—like a thought released too late into a world already changing.
The sky above him stitched itself closed behind his back. The Realm Between Names was gone now. Sealed. Forgotten.
And so Kael returned to the mortal plane—though nothing about him felt mortal anymore.
He landed without sound in the Ashfell Reaches, a forgotten land where smoke curled from soil that never cooled. The trees were blackened bones of their former selves, and the wind carried whispers of wars that ended before history began.
Kael breathed in the cinders.
They smelled like memory.
He took a step forward.
The earth recoiled.
---
In the distance, an ancient tree still burned.
It stood tall—leafless, twisted, its bark glowing faintly with golden-red veins like molten blood. It had no name in this era. The cultivators of today had long forgotten it. But Kael hadn't.
The elders once whispered of it:
The Skyfire Tree—born from the final spark of a dying sun, struck into the ground by a Primordial during the Age Before Oaths.
Now it burned without consuming.
Flames crawled up its limbs but never turned it to ash.
Its roots reached so deep, they fed on things older than soil.
And Kael needed what it guarded.
---
He approached the tree slowly.
Each step cracked the cinders underfoot.
From the shadow of the burning boughs, a figure rose. Robed in scorched cloth, the stranger held no blade, no aura, no badge of power.
Yet he stood firm.
Kael narrowed his eyes.
This wasn't an ordinary guardian.
This was a Warden—chosen by the tree itself.
> "You shouldn't be here," the man said.
His voice was old—not aged, but weathered. Like iron bent but never broken.
> "And yet I am," Kael replied.
> "That flame doesn't belong to mortals anymore."
> "Good," Kael said, stepping forward. "Because I'm not one."
The Warden frowned.
He drew nothing.
Instead, he invited.
His stance lowered. One hand out, one behind. Palm open. The Way of the Crimson Pillar—an extinct form lost to the eastern reaches.
Kael's blade stayed on his back.
He didn't need it yet.
Instead, he shifted his foot, exhaled slowly, and mirrored nothing.
Because Kael no longer fought with styles.
He fought with intention.
---
The clash was silent.
A blur of limbs.
Kael's palm met the Warden's elbow, redirected it with barely a motion. The man spun, tried to trap Kael's shoulder, but Kael wasn't there.
He had moved beyond the motion.
One breath.
One redirection.
And the Warden dropped to one knee, blood tracing down his lip—not from a wound, but from a fractured technique.
> "You walk with ghosts," the man muttered. "How many did you bury to get here?"
Kael looked past him.
> "Enough to know the ones worth remembering."
---
He stepped past the kneeling Warden.
The Skyfire Tree did not resist.
Its flames leaned toward him—as if recognizing something older than itself.
Kael pressed a hand to its base.
The bark burned, but he didn't pull away.
From within the roots, something stirred.
A pulse.
A light.
The tree offered up a single ember—no bigger than a grain of rice, but radiating enough heat to melt stone. It floated to Kael's palm and settled there.
> Skyfire Core.
One of seven eternal flames, long thought lost.
Kael closed his hand around it. His veins shimmered. His breath deepened. A new layer of power slithered beneath his skin like a second heartbeat.
Not just flame.
Memory of flame.
And as he turned to leave, the Warden did not rise.
He bowed instead.
> "What name should I tell the next who dares come here?"
Kael paused.
The ember still burned in his hand.
> "Tell them the one who walked without prayer," he said, "has already passed through."