When Fire Meets Fate

The throne room was colder than memory. Queen Lysandra’s crown still rested where it had fallen; no one dared to touch it.

Lady Elyra stood beneath the ruined arch of the war chamber, her hands trembling, she had seen Aiden rise, forged in the dreaming halls of Moonspire, there were no tears, no screams, no voice; only the hush of fire taking form. He emerged eyes lit with celestial heat, a golden symbol at his chest. A boy without a past, not born of blood, but of purpose; a soul shaped by sacrifice..

ACT I: The Return

When fate is slow, it carves mountains.
When it moves swiftly, even the stars obey.

He walked through Velhara like a memory of something the world had once believed in.

Yet fire alone would be insufficient.

Far beyond the cities and scarred fields, at the withered edges of a world once full of life, something ancient awaits.

Nyx recognized Aiden presence, she stepped into Velhara beneath a sky bruised by twilight and ruin, the fractured moon hung above her; a shattered scar glowing pale and wrong. No guard saw her pass, she moved unnoticed, as shadows often do.

Nyx had returned.

In the Phoenix, she saw the same fracture she carried in silence:

A Singular.

He stood at the edge of a broken wall, fire coiled beneath his skin, staring into fading daylight, their eyes met, and in that silence, both knew they carried the same weight, written in stone, never meant for another. They had been made by different forces, but for the same reason: To face what comes when nothing else remains.

ACT II — The Last Light

Queen Lysandra stood resolute, refusing despair. Velhara’s palace had become a fortress of will, shaped by decisions made in the shadow of collapse. Lysandra gathered her most trusted allies: Ser Caelum, whose blade still remembers, and Lady Elyra, keeper of forgotten melodies.

The Phoenix had risen, yet it was the one who walked unseen that gave pause even to the Queen. Nyx did not ask to join them; she was simply there, as though she had always been part of what was to come.

They prepared an expedition to the Withering’s source, they called it: The Last Light.

Nyx shared chosen truths, revealing the fractured moon as the result of a failed ritual performed by Malgron, once one of Velhara’s most beloved guardians. Queen Lysandra remembered him with sorrow and disbelief, recalling the protector who had once watched over her in childhood. Driven by ambition, Malgron had sought forbidden power, aiming for the throne itself. His ritual shattered the moon, unleashing the Withering upon the world.

Together, they would confront this bitter legacy.

The expedition reached the heart of the blight, a place scarred by the echoes of Malgron's failed spell. Skies darkened unnaturally, ash drifted upward, defying nature. Even the strongest magics frayed at the edges.

At the base of a fractured spire wrapped in decay, Malgron awaited upon a throne shaped from twisted ruin. Once Velhara’s guardian, now he sat cloaked in ruin, crowned with decay, eyes hollow, burning with a shadow beyond worlds. Nyx sensed it immediately; not merely corruption, but a deeper presence; older, vast, and quietly terrifying.

The battle erupted, bending reality itself , Nyx and the Phoenix moved as one, unleashing the full weight of what they were. Malgron’s power distorted gravity and drained light. Aiden surged forward, flame arcing from his hands, while Nyx danced through shadow, blades shaped from darkness. Lysandra fought with the weight of a queen who had already lost too much; Caelum struck with the precision of the last true knight; and Elyra, once a bearer of silence, unleashed a forgotten song that shook the rot from the stone.

As the battle intensified, a sudden ripple fractured reality; a vision seized Malgron, Aiden and Nyx, vivid and undeniable, they faced a boundless abyss, not empty, but filled with presence, something shifted within the void, a being older than stars. Through the rippling darkness, Atlas appeared, kneeling, his emblem cracked, above him death loomed with a hammer poised in judgment; nearby, the silver-haired Pathfinder stood witness.

ACT III — The Turning Wheel

Queen Lysandra, Caelum, and Elyra briefly celebrated, relief evident in their eyes. Their world, for now, had been saved. But standing apart from them, Nyx and Aiden did not share the celebration. They understood that this was not salvation, a simple delay of inevitable events. The vision haunted Nyx. Atlas, Hana, The presence. The four.

She turned to the east, where the Temple of Convergence slept in silence. Aiden, too, looked to the stars, sensing the call, no words needed to be exchanged, for both of them, the feeling was undeniable; but only Nyx Knew:

The Omen had begun. But it was not yet fulfilled; and if they did not act fast, it soon would be.

The wheel had turned.

The Singulars must gather.

Stars ignited and twisted, reality snapped back, sharper and clearer.

Malgron staggered, clarity briefly returning to his corrupted eyes; he turned toward Lysandra, his voice breaking with long-forgotten sorrow.

"Forgive me, my Queen…"

In that vulnerable moment, Nyx and Aiden struck decisively, the presence fractured, struck by something it had never touched before. Malgron disintegrated, his remnants dispersing silently, but just before the end, he looked to Lysandra with a fragile smile, a quiet aching gratitude and the eyes of the man she once knew.

The Withering ceased.

And so… The Age of the Singulars begins.

To be continue ...