The Wastes Beyond the Flame Wall
The wastelands outside the Dominion were more than barren—they were memory made dust.
Renzo walked alone across scorched earth where time seemed to pause. The ground crunched beneath his boots, each step sending tiny flares of residual ember into the air, quickly snuffed by the thin layer of Void Flame that cloaked him.
> This was no armor. It was restraint.
A veil to silence his presence from rogue flamebeasts still roaming the ashes of old wars.
Above, the stars trembled.
Not visibly—but in pulse, in rhythm. Like they remembered what had happened here. And feared its return.
Renzo's destination lay ahead: a yawning gorge that cleaved the world like a scar.
> The Echo Scar—
Once, the place where the Flame Choir had made its final stand against the first Rift.
Now, a wound in the world where silence screamed.
Nothing grew. No winds moved. No birds sang. The very air held its breath.
---
The Monument of Fracture
At the center of the ravine, beneath jagged obsidian shards, half-buried in ancient glassed stone, stood a crumbling monument. Its surface was weathered with time, its carvings etched in fragmented glyphs that danced under Renzo's sight—not written in language, but in emotion.
One line glowed faintly, pulsing in rhythm with his heart:
> "We did not fail. We fractured."
Renzo knelt beside the stones. The Void Flame stirred within—not violently, as it once did, but now like a memory surfacing.
> It recognized this place.
Then came the sound.
A single note.
Soft, sustained, and impossibly alive. A drifting tone, neither heard nor seen, but felt. It resonated through bone and blood.
Renzo tensed. The world was not singing.
> The monument was.
Without thinking, he placed his palm upon the stone.
A rush of light surged through him.
---
Memoryflash – The Choir's Last Song
A different world. A different sky.
Hundreds of flamebearers stood in a vast circle, arms linked, heads raised. Their flames pulsed not in elemental fury, but in unity. Their voices poured upward in golden arcs of melody.
> They did not sing to destroy the Rift.
They sang to remind it.
To teach it what flame once was. Not wrath, but mourning.
The song was not battle—it was a requiem. A grief-born harmony meant to heal.
But something fractured.
A single bearer—whether overwhelmed or corrupted—broke rhythm.
A single dissonant note rippled through the Choir like poison.
> Flames cracked.
The Rift recoiled.
And then it devoured.
The Choir shattered—some vaporized, others lost across realms. A few, twisted into Ashbound echoes.
The song ended in silence.
---
Echo Scar – Present
Renzo fell back, gasping, the memory retreating like a tide. Sweat coated his skin. His glyphs flickered chaotically.
> The Void Flame inside him didn't reject the vision.
It had carried it.
The truth landed like weight in his chest.
> He wasn't just a user of the Void.
He was its vessel.
A container of broken memory. Of half-sung refrains.
And someone else knew.
> "You heard them too, didn't you?"
Renzo spun, hand instinctively raised—but paused.
A figure emerged from the edge of the scar, cloaked in moss and soot-worn armor. Her hair was streaked silver, her eyes the color of drowned flame—green, blue, and flickering unpredictably.
> Her flame shimmered wrong.
Not in chaos, but in age. In loss.
> "I'm Saphiel," she said, voice low. "Last of the living Choir."
Renzo took a step back. "You survived the Rift?"
Saphiel tilted her head, sadness etched into every line of her face.
> "No. I survived the lie."
---
Ignis Dominion – Inner Flame Chambers
Back within the Dominion, Yna and Dal stood before the Flame Council, the scout's report still smoldering in their hands.
> "They're forming bodies," Yna said, her voice taut. "Not born of flame. Reconstructed from memory. Not Voidborne. Something older."
Dal slammed his fist onto the pyre-table. The flames hissed.
> "Then we're not fighting fire anymore," he growled.
"We're fighting regret."
Murmurs erupted. Questions spiraled into accusations.
Sovereign Thorne raised a hand. Silence fell.
> "Then it's time," he said, eyes steeled. "To bring back what we once silenced."
---
Verus's Fortress – Hollow Orbit
In the void beyond light, Verus floated above a massive crystalline ring suspended in antimatter scaffolding—his own perversion of the Flame Choir's original construct.
Bound in chains of soulflame, fragments of the true Choir hovered in place, eyes sealed by molten stardust.
They had no mouths, but they still wept.
> "Sing for me," Verus whispered, hands outstretched.
"And I will set you free."
They did not answer.
They screamed instead.
Verus smiled, and the void answered in harmony.
---
Echo Scar – Under Moonlight
Moonlight painted the blackened canyon in silver ash.
Renzo and Saphiel sat at the edge of the ravine, the monument pulsing faintly behind them.
> "We never meant to erase the Void," Saphiel said softly, staring into the sky. "We meant to teach it grief. We thought our song would hold."
She shook her head.
> "But we underestimated the weight of what the Void had forgotten."
Renzo looked at her—not with pity, but understanding.
> "I haven't failed yet."
Saphiel turned. For the first time, her fractured flame calmed.
> "Then maybe," she said, voice breaking into hope, "you can finish the song."
Above them, for the first time in centuries—
> the stars began to hum.