Dawn came late in Gravesend.
The light that broke through the thick canopy of grey clouds was wan and reluctant, painting the ruined town in pale gold and shadows. Yet the battlefield bore no remnants of the storm from the night before. The ash had settled. The hollow warriors were gone. And the dark knight that had led them had vanished without a trace.
Only Thalen's sword still pulsed faintly with violet fire residue of the Tyrant Spirit's brief emergence.
Selene stirred first. She had slept only briefly, and her eyes remained wary as she studied the murals on the temple walls once more.
"Why now?" she murmured. "Why reveal this place to us?"
Thalen approached, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade. "Because someone wanted us to find it. The Warden, the knight last night… they're all testing us."
Corin snorted as he stuffed dried rations into his mouth. "'Testing' is a soft word for nearly getting gutted."
Thalen's mouth twitched into the barest of smiles. "You survived, didn't you?"
Corin huffed. "Barely."
Selene turned. "Jokes aside, this town Gravesend was never listed in our maps. It wasn't part of the Tyrant Trials."
Thalen nodded. "Then that means someone has rewritten the trials. Or hijacked them."
They stood in a triangle inside the crumbling temple, each one staring at the ancient carving of the First Tyrant. The faceless figure of light. Even though it was just a depiction, it radiated a quiet force.
"I think," Thalen said slowly, "we've been marked."
Selene frowned. "Marked?"
"Watched. Chosen. Maybe not just for the Spirit, but for something larger."
Corin grumbled, "I'd rather not be chosen for anything anymore."
A deep rumble split the silence.
The earth shuddered beneath them. Dust rained from the cracked ceiling. Outside, the wind shifted direction, blowing east with unnatural force.
Thalen stepped to the doorway. In the distance, on the far end of the valley, a wall of black fog was moving no, rolling across the land like a wave.
Ash.
"Something's coming," he said.
They made haste, traveling eastward to the next known checkpoint of the Tyrant Trials a city called Elgaran, nestled within the towering cliffs of the Ember Range. The path was treacherous: broken roads, half-buried landmarks, and strange, shifting winds that distorted sound and scent. It felt like walking through the skin of a dream.
But Thalen was restless. He couldn't shake the sense that something had changed in him after the knight's defeat.
The sword he carried no longer felt like just steel. When he drew it now, it shimmered faintly with violet light that responded to his will and only his will. The blade had begun to hum when enemies were near, almost as if it craved the clash.
Selene noticed it first.
"You're different," she said as they set up camp one evening. "Not just stronger. It's like you're more… aware."
Thalen looked at his hands. They had once been calloused from constant training, rigid with tension. Now they felt heavier, more alive. "I feel things I couldn't before. Intentions. Fear. Rage."
Corin raised an eyebrow. "That's not normal, Thalen."
Thalen nodded. "No, it's not."
Selene leaned forward. "Have you spoken to it?"
"To what?"
"The Spirit. You said it was waiting. Watching. Maybe it's still there. Inside you."
Thalen didn't answer, but that night, as he drifted into a shallow sleep, he dreamed.
He stood in a chamber made of obsidian. There were no doors. No windows. Only firelight flickering from torches on the walls and a single throne carved of bone and smoke at the center.
A man sat there.
Or perhaps something more than a man.
Clad in black robes with violet etchings, his face hidden beneath a crown of jagged steel. When he turned his gaze to Thalen, it felt like reality folded in on itself.
"You touched the flame too early," the voice said not in sound, but in thought.
"You've not earned my name."
Thalen took a step forward. "Who are you?"
"I am the first," the being said, rising from the throne. As he did, ash spiraled around him, forming weapons, shadows, and voices that wept.
"And you are merely the last."
Thalen's sword appeared in his hand. He didn't remember drawing it.
"You're the First Tyrant."
"I was." The voice flickered like firelight. "And if you are not careful, I will be the last again."
"What do you want from me?" Thalen asked, unsure if he was afraid.
The being stepped down. "Survive."
And then the chamber collapsed in a whirlwind of screams.
Thalen awoke with a gasp, sweat clinging to his brow. Selene was already beside him, hand on her blade.
"You were talking in your sleep," she said.
"What did I say?"
She paused. "Something about the last flame."
Thalen's hand gripped his sword. "We need to move. Now."
Elgaran was a fortress-city, half-carved into the cliffs, half-built outward on a shelf of stone that overlooked the Firevale Basin. Steam vents hissed along the mountainside, and the air smelled of sulfur and smoke.
But as they approached the gates, something was wrong.
The guards were gone.
No sentries stood at the battlements. The great metal gate hung ajar, a silent invitation into a dead city.
Corin narrowed his eyes. "This feels wrong."
Selene nodded. "Too quiet."
They entered cautiously. The streets were deserted, but not damaged. Market stalls still bore goods. Carts sat with full crates. Doors were left open. Fires in hearths had burned out only recently.
And yet not a soul in sight.
Thalen stopped beside a basin of water. The surface was calm. Still. But when he dipped his hand into it
He felt nothing.
No temperature. No sensation.
He recoiled.
"What is it?" Selene asked.
"This place… it's not empty," Thalen said. "It's hollow."
Then the whisper came.
So faint, it felt like a breeze across the nape of the neck.
"You've come… bearer of the blade…"
Selene stepped close. "Did you hear that?"
Corin's knuckles whitened around his axe. "Yeah."
The sky above darkened suddenly, though the clouds had not moved. A figure appeared at the far end of the square cloaked in ash and flame.
They didn't walk. They floated.
Their face was a mask of molten iron, eyes like dripping coals.
Thalen drew his sword.
The being raised a hand.
Ash spiraled upward, coalescing into a dozen winged wraiths half-bird, half-smoke that dove from the rooftops like shrieking arrows.
Selene fired a volley of flame. Corin took a defensive stance, grounding himself. Thalen surged forward, blade glowing with aura.
Steel met shadow.
Each creature screamed upon impact, but they didn't bleed they unraveled, like fabric torn in a storm. The masked figure descended, landing lightly in the dust.
"You are not ready," it said. The voice was neither male nor female. "You carry the First's mark, but not his will."
Thalen shouted, "Then test me!"
The being laughed. Not with mockery with sorrow.
"I am no test," it said. "I am a reminder."
It pulled twin blades from its back forged of obsidian and lightning and charged.
The clash that followed was unlike any Thalen had faced. This being fought not with rage, but with grace. Every move was efficient, elegant, deadly. Thalen parried, ducked, struck back but for every blow he landed, three more came at him.
Corin and Selene tried to intervene, but a ring of ash rose between them and the fight.
"Let him face his herald," the voice commanded.
Thalen's knees buckled under the weight of a blow. His blade flickered. The Tyrant Spirit called from within deeper than before. Desperate.
He bled from his arm. His ribs ached. His breath caught.
But he did not fall.
"I may not be ready," Thalen said, eyes burning with resolve, "but I will be."
He struck, not with strength but with rhythm. A beat born from every day of training. Every hour of failure. Every cut. Every bruise. Every lesson.
The masked being staggered.
Thalen surged forward, channeling both Blade Aura and Spirit not fused, but layered. Resonant.
His sword glowed.
He screamed a roar not of rage, but declaration.
And the being fell.
Ash burst outward in a spiral. The wraiths dissolved.
The mask cracked and beneath it, the being was not a monster. But a man.
A former SSS Hero.
"Why?" Thalen whispered.
The man smiled weakly. "Because only those who carry the will… can bear the weight."
He dissolved into ash.
And far above, in the halls of judgment, the remaining SSS Heroes stirred.
"The Herald is defeated," one said.
"Then the world must know," another replied.
"Thalen," whispered the leader, "has begun to ascend."