The ruins of Neranth smoldered beneath a blood-red sky. Ash drifted like snow as Vara, Ayara, and Auren stood at the edge of a scorched battlefield. Mechanist warframes lay shattered, their nanosteel husks cracked open like eggs. Nomad banners were burned to cinders. No victor. Only silence.

  They were too late.

  The Ashen Accord, a fragile truce between three major factions, had collapsed the night before. Vara clenched the third Echo Fragment in her hand, its pulse now erratic. Something had disturbed the Codex's flow here—something immense.

  “We need to find out who lit the spark,” Ayara said, surveying the devastation.

  Auren knelt by a corpse—mechanist, judging by the fractured helm. But the implants were… odd. Overgrown. Organic. Like something had rewritten them on a cellular level.

  “Not nanite work,” he muttered. “This is something else. Something older.”

  Vara’s Codex flared.

  From the blackened temple ruins ahead came a strange sound—like a whisper carried by molten wind.

  They followed it.

  Inside, the walls were marked in Ash Script, a dead language used by pre-Collapse Cultists. Vara could read it now, barely. The Echo Fragments were teaching her, line by line. The text spoke of an ancient entity sealed beneath the world:

  The Hollow Flame.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The One Who Burns Without Smoke.

  As they reached the altar, they found a single figure waiting—Telthar, the Infernal Forge-Master, god of shattered tools and forgotten wars.

  Not in his true form. Just a shard.

  He wore armor made of melted machines, and his voice sounded like a forge exhaling.

  “You carry three songs. The world begins to hear again.”

  Ayara stepped between them, blade raised.

  “You’re a god.”

  “I was. Before the Codex betrayed its own architects.”

  Vara stepped forward. “Why are you here?”

  “To offer a deal. You need strength. I offer it. But there is a price.”

  He reached into the flames of the altar and drew forth a Core Seed—dark, swirling, corrupted but powerful.

  “Take it. Feed it to the next fragment. And you will awaken more than memory.”

  Auren grabbed Vara’s arm. “It’s a trap.”

  Vara stared at the seed.

  She didn’t take it.

  “No,” she said. “I’ll walk my own path.”

  Telthar’s shard laughed—and vanished into smoke and fire.

  The temple collapsed behind them.

  But as they emerged, Vara noticed something had changed.

  Her Codex Core had grown. Three fragments now danced around it, forming a lattice of light and song. She felt stronger. Clearer. And something else—watched.

  Far above, in orbit beyond the storm-shrouded skies, an ancient satellite blinked to life.

  And far below, deep beneath Athon’s crust, the Hollow Flame stirred.