The world held its breath.
Ashwan stood in the dead center of the ruined altar, his fingers closed around the stolen shard of the Final Flame. A golden light pulsed from between his knuckles—soft, measured, and alive. It was not the flame of destruction, nor the corrupted fire Rajin Dhasar had wielded.
This was something purer.
Something… sacred.
Around him, the battlefield shifted. The corrupted terrain began to pulse erratically, losing cohesion. Glyphs etched into the land flickered and died. The leyline beneath the soil, previously warped by demonic rituals, shuddered like a serpent waking from fevered dreams.
And then… it began to heal.
The corruption reversed.
Spirit-grass—once choked black—grew again in tiny sprouts of silver-green. The air warmed. Color seeped back into the world.
Ashwan collapsed to one knee, sweat pouring from his brow. His body trembled violently. Not from injury—but from the effort of containing the flame without releasing it.
He was no longer burning like a warrior.
He was carrying like a guardian.
> "Ashwan!" Ruvana landed beside him, her eyes wide with awe. "What happened? What… is that light?"
He slowly opened his hand.
The flame hovered over his palm, spinning gently—no longer chaotic, no longer dangerous.
"It's listening," Ashwan whispered. "The Final Flame… it hasn't abandoned us. It was taken. But not broken."
Thyrol approached cautiously. "So… are we safe?"
Ashwan looked to the north, where distant sky-cracks still shimmered in the air.
"No," he said. "We're just back on the board."
---
Elsewhere, pinned beneath the rubble of the shattered altar, Rajin Dhasar stirred.
His mask was shattered, his robe torn, and his essence bleeding into the soil. But he was smiling—bleeding teeth and cracked lips.
> "Fool," he wheezed. "You think reclaiming a shard is victory?"
Ashwan turned toward him, voice calm. "You betrayed the Flame. You broke your vows."
Rajin coughed a spatter of black ichor. "I was the first to understand it! That the Flame isn't light… it's choice. It chose power. I only listened."
He reached into his robe and pulled a bone disc, covered in Clan sigils.
"The others will come," Rajin gasped. "You've marked yourself. They will know. The Keepers… the real ones… will wake."
He crushed the disc.
And vanished in a pulse of void light.
Ashwan didn't chase him.
He simply looked at the place where Rajin had been and whispered:
> "Then let them come."
---
The return journey was quiet.
Not silent, like the cursed fields of Kul'tharuun, but the silence of reflection. Every soldier on the team had witnessed something impossible:
A lost flame reclaimed.
A corrupted leyline purified.
A fragment of a divine power willingly held by a man without title, bloodline, or prophecy.
By the time they reached the Veil Fortress gates, the watchers above were already ringing the bells. Ruvana stepped forward to address them.
"Open the gates," she shouted. "The Flame has returned."
The iron doors parted. Guards dropped to their knees as Ashwan passed, still carrying the flame shard floating beside him like a hovering sun.
Inside the War Hall, Priestess Yalini wept openly.
"You did the impossible," she breathed. "You communed with the Flame directly... and it accepted you?"
Ashwan placed the shard gently into the heart of the leyline altar.
The flame sank into the stone—and the entire fortress glowed.
For a brief moment, the walls pulsed with warmth. The bells chimed without hands. The sick and wounded across the courtyard gasped as warmth spread through their bones.
And then it faded—soft, but now rooted.
The Final Flame was home again.
---
Later that night, Ashwan sat alone in the observation tower.
The stars above Vayundhara blinked weakly behind clouds. But within his chest, he still felt it—a low, steady burn.
The flame was not gone. It had changed him.
> "One who carries the flame must also bear the burden," came Agniyan's whisper. "You've been chosen now. Not for power… but for protection."
Ashwan didn't smile.
He simply stood.
The war was far from over.
But for the first time in decades… humanity had a light to follow.