Chapter One: The Ember's Fade

"Did we do it?" Elena asks, panting, bleeding out.

Her voice is barely a whisper beneath the crumbling echoes of the battlefield. Smoke hangs in the air, thick with ash and sorrow. The scorched earth beneath her is warm with fire and blood-too much blood.

Beside her, Kieran doesn't answer. Not because he doesn't hear her, but because he's afraid of the truth. His hand finds hers, trembling, slick with both sweat and her blood.

The beacon in the distance flickers.

They were supposed to stop it.
They were supposed to end it.

But as the sky splits open with a sound like cracking bone, and a surge of light pours from the rift, Elena's question lingers in the ruined silence:

Did they win? Or did they wake something worse?