The air in the Drift was sharp. Not oxygen, not truly breathable—but enough to burn into your lungs if you weren't careful.
Riven Ashfall didn't care.
He stood atop the remains of a shattered moon, gravity patch buzzing faintly on his boots. The landscape stretched endlessly—debris fields, fractured celestial bodies, orbiting ruins from a forgotten war. Somewhere out here, everything had ended once. And something darker had taken root in the silence.
Behind him, his ship hummed low—The Starwake, a one-man glider forged from old Templar tech and outlaw scrap. Its wings flickered with spectral light, barely visible in the blue-black abyss of space.
Riven crouched beside a half-buried obelisk, fingers brushing ancient carvings.
Seven symbols, Burned in.
One of them—the third—was glowing faintly.
Again.
"Another one's awakened," he murmured, voice hoarse.
It had been years—real years, maybe Realm-time years—since Riven had seen anyone else with the Flame. Since the last War of the Sigils, when the Realms began to fall and the Starborn were hunted to extinction.
He thought he was the last.
He hoped he was.
Because hope was dangerous.
And being Starborn meant death followed you like a shadow.
His comms buzzed. "Ashfall, respond."
He sighed "Yeah?"
A distorted voice crackled through. "New surge detected. Earth-sector. Signature match: 03X-VAL-STAR. Confirm?"
Riven's blood chilled.
Vale.
The name echoed through a dozen buried memories. One he hadn't heard in a long, long time.
"Confirmed," he said slowly. "Do we have visuals?"
A brief pause. Then a glitchy hologram rendered itself beside him.
A girl—young, maybe twenty. Lean, fire in her eyes. A ghost of recognition rippled through his face.
He'd seen her before. But not like this.
She looked like her.
"Lyra Vale," the voice said. "Phase Three projection active, Awakened flame, Observers compromised. Protocol WRAITH engaged."
Riven clenched his jaw "No. Tell them to back off."
"Negative. She's unstable. Directive is clear."
Riven smashed the communicator.
He stood in silence for a moment, then turned back toward the Starwake. The ship's thrusters whispered in anticipation, as if already knowing.
"So… another flame," he muttered. "Guess it's time to go home."
Back on Earth, Lyra Vale was losing her mind.
Literally.
Dreams bled into daylight. Voices echoed where they shouldn't. Doors opened that she never touched. Kaelen kept talking about training, about control, about resonance. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw fire, ruin, and the face of that woman—her past self—screaming.
"Am I dying?" she asked him.
"No," Kaelen said, "you're remembering."
"Same thing."
They trained in secret—abandoned structures in Sector 12, beneath old solar stations and forgotten AI cores. Lyra learned to feel the Flame within her, to focus it through her core rather than fear it. It wasn't just raw power—it was memory, legacy, the lingering will of all those who bore the sigil before her.
But she was still weak.
Too slow. Too reactive. And worse—she was being hunted.
The Phase Hunters hadn't stopped. They just adapted. Every time Lyra used her power, they inched closer. Kaelen said they could track wavelengths of awakening—fragments of spiritual code that the Voidspawn fed on.
"We don't have time," she snapped during a break, sweat pouring down her brow. "We need to fight back."
"We will," Kaelen said "But not alone."
He opened his palm.
Inside it floated a tiny hologram. A map of the Realms.
One of the sigils was glowing again.
"Another Starborn," he said quietly.
"Coming this way."
Far across the cosmos, Riven leaned against his ship's console, staring out at Earth's shimmering blue orb from orbit. It felt… too small.
And yet… too important.
He set coordinates.
"Let's meet her," he whispered to no one. "Before they do."
Meanwhile, deep within the Eclipsed Core, the Void-King stirred.
A ripple of pain burned across his throne of frozen light. The rise of the third Starborn had fractured his foresight.
"Ashfall still lives," he rasped.
A chorus of whispers answered him—voices without mouths, minds long devoured.
"Shall we extinguish him, my liege?"
"No," the Void-King said. "Let the last survivor burn his hope one final time. Let him gather them. Let them believe they have a chance…"
"And then?" The king smiled.
"Then I will tear their stars from the sky."