Chapter 2: The Ash Gate

The sun never rose over the Ashlands.

Long ago, the skies had been burned shut by an ancient spell gone wrong—one of the final curses left over from the Titan Wars. What light filtered through was pale and sickly, like a dying candle barely clinging to life. Trees stood petrified, twisted into claws. Rivers boiled with black mist. And far to the north, hidden in the fog, stood the Ash Gate—a monolithic structure carved from obsidian and bone, sealed for centuries.

But now, it pulsed.

Kael could feel it even before they saw it.

He and Lira stood on a jagged ridge overlooking the valley. The landscape was scarred by deep trenches, as if something had clawed through the earth in anger. In the center, the Ash Gate stood tall, guarded by an army of Blightborn—dozens of them, maybe more. Soldiers twisted by corruption, wearing fragments of old armor fused with flesh, their eyes glowing with that unmistakable, poisonous blue.

“This is suicide,” Lira muttered.

Kael didn’t answer. He was watching the way the soldiers moved. Unnatural. Glitching, almost—like memories trying to walk again.

“They’re not alive,” he said.

Lira squinted. “What?”

“They’re echoes. Projected will. Like ghost puppets made of flesh.” He flexed his gauntlet, and the runes shimmered. “Means they can be burned away.”

She looked at him. “You’re scaring me a little.”

“I scare myself,” he replied flatly.

---

An Hour Earlier
Blightborn War Camp

Captain Fenth of the Blightborn did not sleep. His body no longer required such things. The parasite had changed that.

He stared into the scrying flame, watching the Ash Gate flicker. The gate was ancient—older than the gods, maybe. And it was waking. The King of Cinders wanted it opened, but even he didn’t understand what lay behind it. Fenth, however, had seen.

A city of stars. Machinery wrapped in light. Beings that spoke in chords and constructed entire timelines out of dust.

The Blight was never meant to be a curse. It was a message.

That was the heresy that got Fenth thrown into the Maw. That, and what he did to the High Cleric's son.

He smiled with broken teeth. “Let them come.”

---

Now

Kael crouched behind a broken pillar at the edge of the valley. Lira beside him, holding her breath.

“Distraction,” Kael whispered.

“Got one?”

He nodded toward the pouch she carried. “The ember rune you stole.”

Lira blinked. “You knew?”

“I can smell it.”

She sighed. “You’re such a pain.”

“Throw it.”

She didn’t hesitate. With a sharp flick, she tossed the rune into the center of the valley. It bounced once—twice—and then detonated.

A pulse of white fire burst outward, incinerating three Blightborn on impact. The rest turned, hissing and screaming in unnatural tones.

Kael ran.

He moved like a ghost—faster than someone his size had any right to. His gauntlet lit up with sigils, and he leapt into the fray, blade drawn from thin air. It shimmered—half-steel, half-light—bound by old magic.

He cut through them like paper.

Lira followed behind, weaving with speed and flame, her dagger blazing in her grip. They carved a path through the confusion, reaching the base of the Ash Gate just as the smoke cleared.

A deep, metallic groan echoed above.

The gate… was opening.

Kael’s eyes widened. “That wasn’t us.”

Lira backed up. “Something’s coming through.”

A tendril of black mist curled out of the crack, hissing. Then a figure emerged—twenty feet tall, cloaked in rags that flowed like smoke, its head made of a broken mirror.

Kael’s breath caught.

“Mirrorborn.”

He hadn’t seen one in twenty years. The last time he did, it had devoured an entire battalion and bent the sky.

The creature looked at him and spoke—not in words, but in memories. Kael saw flashes of his childhood, his sister’s laughter, the first time he held a sword. Then he saw her death—over and over, on loop.

“Don’t look in its face!” he shouted to Lira.

But she already had.

She dropped to her knees, screaming.

Kael ran forward. The Mirrorborn raised a hand, and a wave of psychic force hit him like a mountain. He grunted, blood trickling from his nose, but he did not fall.

Instead, he thrust his gauntlet forward.

The air split with a sound like shattering glass. A beam of violet light struck the Mirrorborn in the chest, searing through the fog. It howled in reverse—like a voice speaking backwards.

Then it shattered.

Chunks of mirrored skin flew in every direction, dissolving as they hit the ground.

Kael rushed to Lira, who clutched her head.

“Did you see it?” she whispered.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“What… what was that?”

Kael looked up at the open gate. Beyond it, the stars pulsed—not our stars. Alien ones. And machines taller than cities twisted silently in the dark.

“A mistake,” he said. “From long ago. Sealed away for a reason.”

“And now?”

Kael stood, his voice harder now. Cold.

“Now, the world ends.”

---

Far Away
In the Deep Sky Citadel

A council of beings sat around a table made of living stone. They weren’t human. Not anymore. Maybe they never were. Their leader—faceless, robed in eternity—spoke.

“The Idle One has entered the Gate.”

Another nodded. “Then the bindings are broken.”

“He will remember.”

“And he will awaken.”

There was silence. Then one voice said what none dared speak:

“Or… he will become what we feared.”

End of Chapter 2