The storm that was coming did not roar—it whispered.
In the sunless caverns beneath the Ash Obelisk, ancient rites stirred. Cloaked figures moved in perfect silence, their faces hidden behind masks of scorched stone, their eyes burning with ember-light. The Ashbound, exiled Flameborn who had once tried to extinguish the flame altogether, had waited generations for the Core's reawakening.
Now, they had felt it. And they saw it as betrayal.
Their leader, Maerith Val'Tharon, the silver-eyed woman who had once stood among the Flameborn High Council, now stood free of her bindings. Though her body bore the marks of stasis—cracked veins of cooled lava across her skin—her voice returned with terrifying clarity.
"She claims balance," Maerith whispered to her gathered kin. "But balance is a cage. The flame was not meant to be restrained. It was meant to consume."
The Ashbound knelt before her as she lifted an obsidian staff wreathed in black fire.
"Iralith has awakened… so must we."
Back in Iralith, Ember stood atop the city's highest tower, gazing into the night sky. It looked darker now, despite the flame dancing in her veins. Her connection to the Core pulsed with warning. Not fear—challenge.
Eryssa joined her, wind tugging at her cloak. "You feel it too."
"They're coming," Ember said. "And they're not like the Warden. They know the flame… because they were born of it."
Lysra approached, scrolls in hand. "We've uncovered old records—sealed texts about the Ashbound. They didn't just flee the fall of the Flameborn. They caused part of it."
Orin tightened his grip on his sword. "Then we finish what the old council couldn't."
Ember turned to them all, her allies—her family. "We started this to rebuild. But if we must fight again… we do it not with fear, but with flame that remembers."
The age of rebuilding was ending.
A new war for the soul of the flame had begun.