Chapter 105: The Children of the Forsaken Flame
Far across the blasted miles of the fractured realm, beneath the oppressive shadow of the obsidian spires of the Forsaken Temple, Galen stood motionless. His breath was steady, hard as stone, and his gaze cold and unforgiving. Before him, hundreds knelt in silent worship—cloaked and masked, their forms almost indistinguishable in the gloom. Each was branded with the spiral sigil of the Flameborn, a sigil seared deep into flesh and soul alike. They were not soldiers, not mere subjects of some earthly king. They were something else. Something more terrible.
Devotees.
The air was thick with silent reverence, broken only when Galen raised his hand. A sudden hush fell over the gathering, like the crashing of a tidal wave stilled before it broke.
"Ivan's path breathes again," Galen said, voice sharp and cold as winter steel. "The child of one of his broken disciples dares to walk where he should crawl. Where he should have died."
His eyes swept the crowd, piercing each face hidden behind masks and hoods.
"And you—my faithful—will be the fire that erases him. Erases his name. His rebellion. His hope."
The crowd shifted. A thousand breaths held in anticipation.
Among them, a figure stepped forward—taller and broader than the rest. A man wrapped in crimson plate and shadow, his armor black as night with blood-red accents that seemed to pulse like a heartbeat. He was a shadow made flesh, a nightmare forged in steel. His name was Maeren. The Black Fang.
His voice rumbled from beneath his helm, low and hungry. "Send me. Let me rip his legend from the marrow of this world. Let me tear his defiance limb from limb and scatter it to the winds."
Galen regarded him with quiet calculation, the coldest smile touching his lips. "Not yet," he said. "Caedren is not fighting as a man."
A pause.
"He fights as a memory."
Memories.
"That is what makes him dangerous. And memories must be buried properly."
Galen turned away, his cloak swirling in the gathering shadows. Before him, on the great altar carved of black stone, burned a book—not with fire, but with a shifting black light that seemed to swallow all warmth and hope.
It was a relic of the Pre-Charter Age. A text so forbidden that even the old kings had outlawed it, fearing the power it contained.
From the trembling pages, Galen drew a name. A cursed one. A name whispered in fear by those who survived the old wars.
"Send the Whispered Ones," he commanded, voice like a curse. "Let Caedren learn that the past is not only history—it is hunger. It is death. It is a shadow that devours all light."
In the heart of the Red Expanse, Caedren's camp had grown from a flicker of hope into a flickering blaze of resistance.
Refugees from the southern borderlands filtered in—broken knights with shattered swords, scattered mages bearing remnants of lost spells, village defenders whose courage far outpaced their skill. Each arrived bearing stories that chilled the blood. Strange disappearances. Entire patrols vanishing into silence. Fire without smoke. Screams without bodies.
The camp was a sprawling cluster of tents and makeshift shelters, lit by flickering lanterns and guarded by weary eyes.
Lysa met Caedren at the central tent, her face pale and drawn.
"Something's hunting us," she said, voice low, barely concealing the tremor beneath. "But it's not like Galen's usual zealots."
Caedren's eyes darkened with concern. "This… this feels older."
"Older?" she echoed.
"The mirror warned us of this," he said. "Ivan feared the deeper cults—the ones even Galen barely controls. The ones who do not seek power, but oblivion."
The wind moaned through the camp as Caedren rose, his cloak snapping behind him.
"We don't wait to be hunted."
That night, beneath a sky thick with stars, Caedren led a party of nine into the jagged crags where the disappearances had begun.
The air was thick with silence and shadow. The wind howled like a beast in pain. Shadows moved unnaturally, bending and twisting against the natural flow of light.
And then—he saw it.
A figure standing unnaturally still atop a ridge. Wrapped in burial cloth that shifted like smoke, its eyes burning with a black heat that seemed to consume light and hope alike.
No heartbeat.
No breath.
A living corpse.
Caedren whispered, "Whispered One."
The creature turned its head slowly, deliberately.
And screamed—not with voice, but with memory.
A wave of pain and fear crashed into the minds of all nine riders.
Two dropped dead on the spot, eyes wide in silent terror—no wound to explain their sudden deaths.
Caedren gritted his teeth, tightening his grip on his sword.
He charged.
His blade met resistance—not flesh, not armor.
Will.
The Whispered One's hand shot out, catching his sword mid-swing as if it were a twig.
But Caedren's armor—the forgotten steel of the Reckoners—held true.
He slammed the pommel of his sword into the creature's skull, again and again, each blow ringing with the weight of resolve.
The Whispered One shrieked, a sound like a thousand voices crying out in pain and rage.
Lysa hurled a flame-sigil—a bright symbol of burning truth—searing the creature's chest.
It fell backward off the ridge.
But its scream remained.
Echoing.
Haunting.
Through the rocks.
And then more came.
Dozens.
Emerging from the darkness like shadows made flesh.
Their eyes burning black, their mouths silent but screaming.
Caedren stood between them and his fallen men.
"No more ghosts," he growled.
"No more phantoms."
His sword flashed in the dark, carving paths of light and death.
Beside him, Lysa sang spells old as dust, her voice a clarion call against the night.
Their blades sang in tandem.
Their blood ran red and true.
For every Whispered One that rose, Caedren answered with truth.
By dawn, only ash remained.
But so did resolve.
Caedren returned to camp, bloodied and exhausted, eyes blazing with a fierce light that did not waver.
He stood before the gathered—before the broken, the weary, the hopeful.
"Tell the world," he said, voice raw but unyielding, "the past has come for us."
He looked toward the horizon where Galen's darkness festered like a wound.
"But I've come for it."
The Reckoner's War had truly begun.