The blackened glass plains went on for miles.
Each step Kael made rang out with the shattering of stone, although nothing shattered under his feet. The terrain rippled with illusion, a reflection of skies that did not exist. The world here was broken—distorted by magic, time, and sorrow. Even the air tasted wrong, as if Kael was breathing echoes.
"THIS is the Shattered Path," Lysara breathed at his side. "A world rent from the rest of the world at the First Sundering. The veil that separates then from now is at its thinnest here."
Kael watched her. "You brought me here for some purpose."
She nodded, lifting her hood forward. "The sword has questions it doesn't know how to ask. And the answers are hidden in the minds of the dead."
Kael blinked. "You would have me speak to the holders of the past."
"Not talk," she instructed. "View."
The ground shook.
A rift yawned open beneath them, leading to a spire of black flame and gold light, unwinding deep beneath the earth. Without hesitation, Lysara walked into the rift. Kael trailed, Shadowfire trembling with excitement across his back.
---
They plunged.
Not across space—but into memory.
Things around them dissolved into vision. Light. Fire. Voices.
Kael found himself in a centuries-old battlefield under three suns.
There was a woman in red armor who battled at the front of an army. Sirael, the third wielder—he knew her name without needing it to be said. Shadowfire flickered in her fingers, hotter than the three suns overhead. With each strike of her sword, magic and metal both went down. She was a force of rage.
Then
A glimpse of a man with empty eyes, crying as he drove Shadowfire into a crystal tower. He spoke a name Kael couldn't recall, though he tried.
Then—
A youth, hardly older than Kael had been when he first picked up a hammer, grasping the sword in shaking fingers, standing against a god of wings and silence.
Kael's eyes went wide as visions ripped through him. Faces, names, wars—all with the same end: death, sacrifice, and silence.
The visions finally ceased.
And Kael was standing where no place existed.
A hall of flame and glass.
The Bearers formed a circle around him—not bodies, but whispers, their presence made up of light and remembrance. Some were angry. Some were crying. One took a step forward.
The First Bearer.
She was taller than any human. Skin like starlight. Eyes that saw through time.
Her voice boomed—not loud, but final.
"You carry the Flame Unfinished."
Kael swallowed. "I don't understand."
"You were not meant to be the end," she said. "You were meant to be the choice."
The sword pulsed on his back. Kael's hand gripped it instinctively.
"Every bearer shaped the blade," she continued. "But none dared change it."
"Change it how?" he asked.
She drew nearer. "To kill the sorcerer is to break the cycle. But you choose—will Shadowfire be a sword of ruin? Or will you remake it?"
The murmurs around her rose. Some of them nodded. Others drew back.
Kael gazed at his hands—callused, worn. Builder's hands. Shaper's hands.
And for the first time, he saw the blade not only as a burden…
…but as material.
Something that could be remade.
"I can't do it alone," he said.
"You never were," the First Bearer said. She placed her fingers on his brow. "Awaken the Flame Forged. They remember."
---
Kael awoke with a gasp.
He was once again on the black plain. Lysara sat beside him, concern marking her features.
"What did you see?" she asked.
Kael rose slowly, looking at the sword. The runes on it had shifted—subtle, but different. The hilt now bore the mark of the forge—the very same one he'd etched on his first blade in Black Hollow.
He looked to Lysara.
"I don't think I'm meant to just carry Shadowfire," he said. "I'm meant to redefine it."
And from far beyond the plains, the Black Tower cracked with thunder.
The wizard stumbled in his ritual room, blood dripping from his hands.
"No…" he croaked. "He's changing it."
And far beneath the tower, something old awakened.
A forge.
Long cold.
Sparkling back to life.