The skies above the ruined outposts of western Laginaple churned with turbulent clouds, as if the heavens themselves bore witness to the blood that stained the soil. The storm clouds boiled with unnatural rage, echoing the screams of those who had fallen. Lightning forked across the ash-hazed sky, casting brief flashes upon the battlefield, where crimson banners twisted in the wind, frayed and half-burnt, like the broken dreams of the fallen. Smoke curled upward from collapsed trenches and shattered ballistae. The air smelled of steel, ozone, and smoldering sorrow. And in that chaos, Zera walked.
Her boots crunched over shattered helmets, bones, and rusted weapons half-sunken in the mud. Clarent hung loosely in her grip, the blade dripping with blood not her own, leaving red trails with every step. Beside her moved Lyssa, the battle mage crackling with volatile arcs of lightning, her robes scorched from spent spellwork, her breathing shallow but steady, her eyes alive with fury. Behind them, the last line of Falzath guards fell, bodies crumpling into the muddy soil like discarded puppets, limbs twisted, faces frozen in disbelief.
Zera didn't speak. Her thoughts were a storm of memory and purpose, her heartbeat echoing like war drums in her ears. Clarent pulsed faintly in her hand, the ancestral blade heavier with each step, not from weight but from the legacy it carried. With every Falzath soldier that fell beneath it, she felt the ties binding her closer to Shin's path, his burden, his Crest. The echoes of his voice stirred in her soul.
Lyssa broke the silence. "That was the last patrol west of the fortress." She wiped blood from her cheek, the stain smearing like war paint. "Tristan must be reinforcing the capital. They're drawing back."
"Then we press forward," Zera said quietly. Her voice was calm, but her eyes blazed like twin pyres. "No more delays."
The pair moved past the final ridge, where the broken remnants of a watchtower slumped like a wounded giant, ribs of stone and timber jutting skyward. Fires flickered within the collapsed walls, fed by the dry grass and shattered oil canisters. Corpses lay in heaps, unburied and unnamed, testaments to the price of resistance. The remnants of Tristan's vanguard had scattered under their assault. And now, in the eerie silence, Zera allowed herself to breathe.
Her Crest, etched above her heart, flared.
The warmth coursed through her veins, linking memory to flesh, will to steel. Her mind drifted back to the first time she took Clarent in her hands, back in Volume 4, in the Valley of Glass, where wind and prophecy met. She'd pledged herself then to Shin's cause. Not because she had to. Because she believed. Because something about the fire in his soul called to the ancient Dragonheart within her.
And now she felt it again.
The same pulse that lived in Yoshimatsu pulsed in Clarent. Both blades born of ancient craft and noble suffering. Both blades guided by crests, and vows, and sorrow. She could almost hear the spirits of the past whispering through the steel.
She knelt and placed Clarent's tip into the earth. Around her, the wind began to stir. Not Lyssa's conjured gusts, but something deeper. A resonance. Her Crest shimmered in response, threads of golden light rising from her skin, tracing over her armor like living ink. Symbols long dormant awakened on her gauntlets, glowing with ancestral memory.
She closed her eyes.
"Shin... wherever you are, hold on. Your light has not gone out. It cannot. I won't let it."
She thought of their time under Soma's moonlight. Of the promises made. The fire shared between fox and knight. She recalled the tale Shin told her of his father, and how the orb he carried was more than just a tool. It was legacy. It was memory. It was his pain, crystallized into a promise of never yielding.
Clarent began to hum.
Lyssa stepped closer. "Zera?"
Zera opened her eyes, a tear slipping down her cheek before the wind tore it away.
"It's time to strike at the council. Tristan is not the root. Voryn is. And he's not alone."
From the shadows of the ravaged tower, a voice echoed.
"You're right. He answers to them now. The Elder Council watches from the Hollow Spire."
A figure emerged. Cloaked, limping, with a broken crest scorched onto his forearm. A Renegade defector, his face gaunt, eyes hollow with truths too heavy to bear.
Lyssa raised her hand, lightning flaring, but Zera held up hers.
"Let him speak."
The man knelt, panting, each breath a battle. "You think this is war. But this is prophecy. Voryn doesn't just want power. He wants to reshape the Crests. Rewrite the story. The Elder Council—they are not just advisors. They are remnants of the First Flame. They used Soma. And they will use Tristan."
Zera's knuckles whitened on Clarent. Her voice was low, trembling with restrained wrath. "Then we unmake them. One by one."
The man looked up, trembling. "You can't fight fate."
She stepped forward, her blade igniting with dragonfire. Her Crest flared like a second sun, casting long shadows over the battlefield.
"Watch me."
She turned to Lyssa. "Rally the Fourth Talon. We move north. The Hollow Spire falls next."
And as thunder rolled behind them, and the Renegade vanished into mist, Zera lifted Clarent high, her vow burning bright:
She would honor Shin's Soma legacy.
She would defend the world that still dared to dream.
And she would never again let dragons fall to silence.