The ash still fell.
It drifted like snow across the ruined Vale, soft and silent, clinging to armor and skin, staining the wounded and the dead without mercy. Kaelen stood unmoving beneath the broken sky, the ember in his chest flickering low like the last coals of a dying fire.
Around him, the remnants of the living gathered.
They came limping, bloody, burned. Some helped the wounded, others dragged the bodies of fallen comrades to rows hastily carved from shattered stone. No one cheered. Victory had cost them too much for celebration.
Lys approached, her hair singed at the edges, her left arm wrapped in bloodstained cloth. "We hold the Vale," she said, her voice hoarse. "But barely."
Kaelen nodded. His limbs trembled from exhaustion, but the fire in him had not gone cold.
"Any word from the northern flanks?"
"Gone. The frostwatchers never reached the second rise." She looked toward the Monolith, now dormant and cracked down one side. "Whatever that thing was… it broke more than the lines."
Kaelen turned his gaze to the crater where the Unnamed had fallen. Nothing remained but blackened bones and a faint golden glow lingering in the dust. The ember inside him pulsed once in mourning.
Then came Aelric, limping with his usual swagger, his cloak torn to rags. "Well," he said, dropping beside them with a grunt, "if that's what one of the Hollow King's champions looks like, I'd rather face a god with a dagger between my teeth."
Kaelen managed a small smile. "You nearly lost your teeth back there."
"And a rib. Maybe three. I think I coughed one up."
"Still talking," Lys said, "so you're probably fine."
Aelric sighed. "Remind me why we're doing this again?"
Kaelen looked up at the rising sun — blood-orange behind a veil of ash. "Because if we don't, he wins."
In the Depths of the Monolith
Far from the sunlit ruin, beneath the Monolith's roots, the Hollow King watched from his throne of whispering stone.
The death of the Unnamed echoed through the crypts. The ancient soul, once a prince of the Sable Kingdom, had failed. Light had pierced the unpierceable.
Still, the Hollow King did not move.
He sat shrouded in chains of silence, his eyes closed, a thousand thoughts spinning behind his brow. Around him, the last remnants of the Crownwraiths knelt, their forms flickering like fading stars.
"He grows stronger," murmured one, its voice little more than smoke.
"Yes," the Hollow King said softly.
"Shall we strike again?"
"No."
"Then what—?"
"I waited three hundred years to rise," he whispered. "I can wait a few days longer."
His skeletal hand curled around the void sigil, the last piece of the First Crown that once shattered his soul. "He has touched five Crowns. That is more than the old kings ever dared. But he walks the edge of ruin."
He rose, and the chamber dimmed.
"Summon the Drowned Herald. It is time to stir the Sea of Bones."
The Road Ahead
That night, Kaelen stood beside the third obelisk, watching the pyres burn. The names of the fallen were etched in stone, though many would remain unknown. Too many.
Lys came to him with a parchment map, burned at the edges, showing the final four Crown sites: the Obsidian Throne, the Skyreach Ruins, the Sea Vault beneath Iskaran, and the Hollow King's own tomb.
"The southern pass is sealed," she said. "Frost and landslides. But the Riverway still flows east. If we move quickly, we can reach the Skyreach in six days."
"Skyreach first," Kaelen said. "Then the sea."
Aelric snorted. "Fantastic. Nothing like climbing ancient ruins and diving into cursed oceans while shadowspawn bite at our heels."
Kaelen's gaze was hard, but quiet. "We either claim the Crowns… or we give him the world."
He turned to the camp, where hundreds now looked to him — not as a blacksmith's son, but as something more. Not a king. Not yet.
But something brighter than any throne.
Final Scene – The Drowned Herald Stirs
Far across the eastern sea, beneath the drowned kingdom of Iskaran, something awoke.
A bell, long submerged, rang once.
Then again.
And again.
The Drowned Herald opened its eyes — pale, blind, endless — and turned toward the land where fire had risen once more.
Its chains broke.
And the sea began to scream.