The dream came again—wings of shadow blotting out the sun.
Seris jolted awake, heart pounding, sweat cold on her brow. But this time, she didn't reach for fire. She reached for Kaelen's hand.
He was already awake beside her, eyes sharp with understanding. "The Shadow's not done, is it?"
Seris shook her head slowly. "No. It's moving again. But this time… it's not trying to conquer. It's trying to flee."
"Flee?" Kaelen sat up fully. "From what?"
She stared out the window, toward the distant mountains beyond the Vale. "Something older than it."
---
By midday, the Citadel's chambers echoed with urgent voices.
Arin stood at the center of the new Circle, holding a scroll charred at the edges. "A message arrived from the outer outposts. Flamebeacons went dark along the Spine of Nareth."
Ashra frowned. "The Nareth range is fortified with Pact wards. They shouldn't be failing."
"They didn't fail," Arin said. "They shattered."
Kaelen paced behind Seris, blade still strapped across his back. "That's where the Mirror Queen's last exile was sealed, isn't it?"
Ashra's eyes widened. "The Wind Vault. It holds the remnants of the Mirror Realm's first breath—long before the Queen."
Seris rose. "Then that's where we go."
Elder Maen's voice cut across the hall, slower now with age but still firm. "You've forged balance. But you haven't answered what hides in the deeper dark."
Seris turned to him. "Then I will."
---
They rode east beneath silver skies, where the wind no longer whispered but howled—uncontrolled and furious.
Arin's flames struggled to hold shape. Even Ashra's once-perfect runes blurred in the air.
"This wind isn't just air," Ashra said grimly. "It's laced with memory. Lost ones. Forgotten things."
Seris nodded. "Then we remember them."
They reached the Spine of Nareth by nightfall. The mountains loomed like broken teeth, snowless, yet bitterly cold. The wind keened through shattered arches of old magic, echoing like voices caught between worlds.
At the summit, the Vault awaited.
Once a proud spire of elemental sealing, it now lay cracked. Not from within—but from above. Something had clawed it open, from the sky down.
Inside, the wind was deafening.
At the heart of the Vault, they found it.
A creature—winged, skeletal, yet wrapped in veils of starlight and shadow. It floated above a shattered pedestal where the Mirror Queen's last seal had been etched. That seal was gone now. Devoured.
The creature's eyes—silver within silver—opened slowly.
"Not the Shadow," Seris whispered.
Ashra stepped back. "No… this is what even the Shadow fears."
---
The creature spoke without moving its mouth.
"Children of Flame. Heirs of Echo. Your world is cracked."
Seris stepped forward. "Who are you?"
"I am what was forgotten before forgetting was born. I am Reckoning."
Kaelen drew his blades. "And what do you want?"
The creature hovered closer, no malice in its presence—only inevitability.
"Balance was forged, but not offered. Shadow was housed, but not absolved. Your peace is incomplete."
Seris clenched her fists. "We gave everything to stop the Shadow."
"And in doing so, you became its keepers. The Reckoning does not punish—it completes."
Ashra whispered, "It's not here to destroy. It's here to remind us that balance demands sacrifice."
The creature extended one wing, light and shadow dancing across its span.
"You may offer. Or it will be taken."
Seris's eyes burned. "What kind of offering?"
"Memory. Power. Legacy."
The chamber darkened.
Kaelen moved in front of her. "She's given enough."
Seris placed a hand on his shoulder, stepping forward.
"I'll give what I must. But not just mine."
She drew forth the Crown of Balance from her satchel and held it aloft.
"This doesn't belong to me. It belongs to all of us."
Behind her, Arin raised his flame. Ashra called wind and stone. Kaelen, lightning.
The Reckoning paused. Then, slowly, it bowed.
"Then you understand. Let the Offering be shared."
---
What followed was not pain, but memory.
Seris saw visions of her ancestors—not just the cruel ones, but the quiet ones. The ones who healed instead of harmed. She saw the Mirror Queen as a child, laughing before corruption took root. She saw Kaelen as a boy chasing storms barefoot, and Ashra weaving flame into lullabies.
All of it poured into the wind.
All of it remembered.
When the vision faded, the creature was gone.
Only feathers of silver shadow remained, warm to the touch.
---
They returned to Solvyris changed.
Not weaker.
Not broken.
But lighter.
The Reckoning had not come to destroy.
It had come to finish what the Ember Pact had started.
Seris placed the feathers on the pedestal in the Circle.
"They're not warnings," she said. "They're wings. For what comes next."
---
That night, as stars wheeled above the world that had almost broken, Kaelen lay beside her, gaze tracing the constellations.
"You think it's over?" he asked.
"No," Seris whispered, curling into his side.
"But I think we've stopped burning just to survive."
She touched his chest gently, where his heart beat steady.
"Now, we burn to build."