Darkness.
Thick and eternal.
For centuries, it had been his only companion.
The silence had grown so vast, so absolute, that even his thoughts had dulled beneath its weight. But now… something had shifted.
A whisper.
A scent.
A spark of warmth that didn't belong in the hollow cold of death.
Vaelaria.
The name echoed across the ruins of his soul, dragging him from the abyss. Slowly, the stillness cracked. Not with sound—but with memory.
The first to awaken was not his body. It was his grief.
It uncoiled like a serpent, ancient and starved. He remembered the way her eyes had burned with light. The way her voice had shaken mountains. The moment she had chosen death over him. Over them.
"I would burn for you," he had told her once, centuries ago.
And she had answered, "Then you will only know ash."
Now the ash had cleared. And beneath it… he still remained.
The stone that entombed him trembled.
Hair like frost spilled over his shoulders as he shifted. Joints that had not moved in an age cracked and groaned like breaking ice. His pale skin, once smooth and flawless, had hardened into something ancient—more marble than flesh.
Eyes opened.
Not red. Not gold.
Black.
At first, they reflected nothing.
But then… a shimmer.
Familiar.
Her.
She had stepped into the mirror. That cursed relic still tethered to his soul. She had seen what he left there for her.
The memory. The truth.
He smiled—slow, sharp.
"She remembers."
Valtherion stood.
The cathedral around him responded like a slumbering beast. Dust rose in clouds. Chains groaned. The bones of titans stirred in the foundations of the city, sensing their master's return.
Servants of stone and shadow uncurled in the dark, eyes flickering open across the walls, the floor, the altar. Silent watchers, born from the void between life and death.
Valtherion walked down the black marble steps, barefoot and silent. His long cloak flowed behind him like a ripple of midnight silk. At his hip, a blade began to hum—a thin, curved weapon etched with runes of ancient blood.
He placed a hand over his heart.
It did not beat.
It never had.
Not since she left him.
But now—now that she walked the world again, now that her soul stirred in mortal skin—he felt the phantom of its rhythm. Like a dying drum picking up speed.
Not for joy.
Not for vengeance.
For completion.
The great doors of the cathedral groaned open at his presence.
Outside, the City Beneath the Bones pulsed with renewed life. Ghosts of dead kings turned in their graves. Ancient magics awoke like wolves sniffing blood on the wind. The sky above the canyon grew darker, though no sun hung there.
The world knew he had awakened.
And the Veil trembled in response.
He lifted a hand, and shadows bent to him.
Figures emerged from beneath the ruins—his heralds. Once humans, now something more. Something less. Their faces were obscured by masks shaped like fangs, and their skin had forgotten the color of life.
"My king," they whispered in unison, falling to their knees.
Valtherion's voice was like velvet soaked in poison. "Find her."
The heralds did not ask who.
They scattered like smoke across the ruins, vanishing into the tunnels, the bones, the cracks in the world itself.
Valtherion remained atop the cathedral steps, his gaze drifting upward, toward the ledge that overlooked the valley.
He could sense her.
Eira.
Not Vaelaria. Not anymore.
This was the echo she had left behind—mortal and fragile, burning still, but uncertain of her fire.
His expression shifted.
A flicker of pain.
She would not come willingly. She never had. Not when she wore crowns. Not when she wore chains.
But she was his.
Always.
He turned toward the cathedral's altar.
There, nestled in obsidian claws, rested a coffin of bone and crystal. Inside it, suspended in bloodless stasis, lay a mirror-image of the woman he once loved.
Her eyes closed.
Her chest unmoving.
Vaelaria.
Or what remained of her.
A husk, perfectly preserved. Empty. A shell he had tried to rebuild a thousand times. But no magic, no science, no divine will had brought her back. Only reincarnation had succeeded. Only fate had defied his curse.
"Why must you come back in pieces?" he murmured, touching the crystal surface.
No answer.
Just silence.
He turned away.
His footsteps echoed as he descended into the catacombs beneath the city. Statues lined the halls—twisted angels, chained gods, figures both divine and monstrous. All bowed in shadow to him.
He entered the chamber of chains.
There, at the center, a giant horned skull hung suspended above a pit of void. Black tendrils coiled from it, reaching toward the high ceiling like veins desperate for a heart.
Valtherion raised both hands.
"I call upon the Accord," he said, voice ringing with unholy command. "Let the Binding awaken. Let the Pact reignite."
The skull pulsed with crimson light.
The earth groaned.
And something beneath the bones began to move.
When he returned to the surface, the first snow of the season had begun to fall. Each flake melted before it touched him. The cold could not reach him. Had not for a thousand years.
He looked once more toward the cliffs.
She was up there.
He could feel her pulse—erratic, uncertain. Haunted by memory.
Valtherion smiled again.
"She is afraid," he murmured. "Good. Let fear remind her of who she truly is."
He tilted his head back, snow dissolving against his lips.
"Come to me, little Flame. Come before I come for you."
His voice echoed through the ruins.
Not loud.
Not angry.
But inevitable.