Chapter 33: The Gathering of the Unburned

Arlen couldn't do it alone.

The blade was forged.

His heart was hardened.

But the path ahead would not yield to will alone.

He needed allies.

Not warriors.

Not soldiers.

But those who had survived the touch of the dark and lived.

The Echo-Walkers

The first he found in the ruins of Kirelith.

A girl, no older than twelve, who spoke to the dead.

She called herself Mira, and her eyes glowed pale green.

They said the Gate had swallowed her village,

but she walked out of it, barefoot, humming lullabies to ghosts.

When Arlen approached, she looked straight into him.

"You dream of her. The one who burns."

He knelt before her. "Will you help me stop her?"

She nodded once.

"But first you must hear them."

That night, the dead whispered through Arlen's dreams

names of those Evelyn had touched… and those she would.

The Man with No Blood

Next was Torren, found in a monastery beneath the Hollow Peaks.

He didn't bleed.

His veins were filled with silver light.

The monks called him a curse

but Arlen saw his scars and knew he was chosen.

"I stood in the Gate once," Torren said,

his voice a low hum like thunder.

"I stood in its heart and screamed and it blinked."

Arlen handed him the sword for a moment.

Torren held it without flinching.

"I will follow you," he said, "but only until the end."

"There is no after this."

The Shadows Whisper Back

As they traveled north toward Blackreach's remains,

the skies remained torn.

Stars flickered out.

The moon bled every night.

Evelyn's crown grew heavier

not in weight, but in presence.

She could feel them.

Arlen.

The girl.

The bloodless man.

She smiled, amused.

Let them come.

Let them gather.

She would not break.

She would ascend.

But late at night, when she looked into mirrors,

the shadows moved without her.

And once,

she heard a voice not her own whisper:

"Please… don't let me disappear."

The Beacon in the Ice

Their final ally waited at the edge of the world.

Eira, the Ice-Witch of Elendra, whose heart had been frozen by grief and power.

Her kingdom had fallen to the Gate decades ago.

But she remained, alone atop a tower carved from glaciers,

watching the dark grow closer each year.

When Arlen climbed to her, frost biting his lungs,

he found her already waiting.

"You seek to stop the end?" she asked.

He nodded.

She turned and raised her hand

the sky above split,

and through the ice, stars blinked like warnings.

"Then let us bring winter to the flame."

The Four Against Fate

Now they were four.

Broken. Haunted. Touched by the Gate.

They had no banners.

No army.

No prophecy on their side.

Only purpose.

And Mercy.

As they descended the mountain,

Arlen looked to the horizon, where darkness billowed like a storm.

There, somewhere within the ruins of Blackreach,

Evelyn waited.

Crowned. Changed. Consumed.

And maybe

just maybe

still holding on to a sliver of the girl she used to be.

---

The Ruins Remember

The wind howled through the shattered bones of Blackreach.

What was once a thriving kingdom now lay in ruin its towers crumbled, its spires crooked like broken fingers clawing at a dead sky. The streets were silent, save for the slow creaking of shadow-infested stones whispering names long lost to time.

But the city was not empty.

Not truly.

Beneath the rubble and ruin, things stirred.

Things that once were human.

The Silent Procession

Arlen and his companions stepped across the broken bridge that led to Blackreach's outer wall. Mira moved ahead of them, her bare feet never quite touching the ground, her eyes wide as she whispered to invisible voices only she could hear.

"They're waiting," she said softly. "The ones who never left."

Torren gripped the hilt of his twin axes. "The dead?"

"No," Mira replied, tilting her head. "The forgotten."

As if on cue, figures emerged from the fog.

Pale, twisted, half-formed.

They moved like marionettes with snapped strings. Limbs bent at wrong angles. Faces blurred as if erased by time. But they did not attack.

They watched.

And as the group passed, the silent watchers knelt one by one bowing their heads to Mira.

"I don't like this," Eira muttered, frost rising from her cloak. "They're not hostile, but they're not alive either."

"They're tethered," Mira whispered. "Tethered to her."

"To Evelyn?" Arlen asked.

Mira didn't answer.

In the Heart of the Drowned City

The deeper they went, the stranger Blackreach became.

Buildings melted into one another like wax. Streets looped back on themselves. Doors led to nowhere or worse, opened into memories.

Arlen opened one such door and saw his childhood his mother's voice calling him back from the orchard. For a moment, he stepped forward… and felt himself begin to forget.

Torren slammed the door shut behind him.

"She's protecting this place," he growled. "Twisting it. Making it feel like home."

Eira's frost magic glowed brighter with every step. "No. Not home. Prison."

It wasn't just Evelyn's power shaping the ruins it was her grief, her longing, her descent.

They were walking through her heart.

And it was breaking.

The Voice from the Veil

That night, as they made camp within a cathedral overrun with vines of black crystal, Evelyn spoke to Arlen.

Not in dreams.

Not through visions.

But directly, her voice carried on the wind.

"Why are you here, Arlen?"

He stood at the shattered altar, hands clenched.

"You know why."

"No. I don't," her voice whispered. "You already lost me. I already chose. So why follow me into the dark?"

"Because you're still in there."

Silence.

Then, a laugh. Soft. Sad.

"You're a fool."

"I know."

She didn't respond. But the wind around him grew colder… and for a heartbeat, it felt like the cathedral exhaled.

Mira stood in the shadows behind him, her gaze distant.

"She's watching us now," she said. "And something inside her is scared."

The Warning

Just before dawn, the sky cracked open with a streak of green lightning.

From the center of Blackreach, a tower of flame burst upward, shattering the clouds.

A signal.

"She knows we're here," Eira said grimly.

"Good," Torren growled. "Let her know what's coming."

But Arlen wasn't so sure.

Because just beneath the flames, he saw it.

A throne of bone and shadow.

And Evelyn, standing beside it.

Smiling.

Ashes of the First Flame

They stood at the edge of the Promenade of Bones what had once been the grand road into the beating heart of Blackreach. Now, its stones were scorched black, cracked open as if the earth had screamed and split. Statues of kings long dead lined the sides, most broken, melted, or hollow-eyed with despair.

And at the end of the path stood the first trial.

Not a beast.

Not a trap.

But a man.

Or… what used to be one.

The Herald of Hollow Flame

He stood cloaked in rags that smoked with embers, the tips of his fingers still aflame. His face was masked in iron, etched with runes that pulsed a dull red glow.

"Step no further," he said, voice dry as burning parchment. "She does not wish to see you."

Torren stepped forward without hesitation. "Then tell her we don't care."

The Herald lifted a single hand. The flames on his fingers rose, wrapping around his forearm like serpents. "I was once like you. I loved her too. I burned for her. And she gave me purpose. She gave me fire."

Mira narrowed her eyes. "You're one of the Chosen."

"I was the first."

The Flames Remember

With a sweep of his hand, fire surged from the cracked stones, racing toward them like a river of heat. Eira stepped forward, her ice spiraling out, freezing the ground in jagged shards. Where fire met frost, the clash roared like thunder.

The Herald moved through the flames untouched.

Torren's axes met his burning blade in a flash of sparks.

Arlen circled, watching… waiting.

He wasn't here to kill the Herald.

He was here to understand.

Because this man this broken, burning husk knew Evelyn. Knew what she had become. And if there was any chance she could be reached, he needed answers.

But the Herald was not interested in talk.

"Only the devoted may walk the Promenade," he growled, swinging his blade wide. "Only the marked. The rest shall burn."

A Memory Ignites

As Mira chanted softly in the background, her voice rising into an eerie harmony, the battlefield flickered just for a moment.

And Arlen saw the past.

The Herald, younger, unburned. Kneeling before Evelyn, offering his blade. She touched his forehead, not with malice but with sorrow.

"You'll burn for me," she had said.

And he had smiled.

He had begged for it.

The memory faded.

And in the present, Arlen saw the last spark of humanity flicker behind the Herald's eyes.

"You loved her," Arlen said softly, even as the battle raged around him. "But she didn't want this for you."

The Herald staggered.

The fire faltered.

And in that split second, Torren drove the blunt side of his axe into the man's chest hard enough to send him crashing back into the ash.

The flames died with him.

The Gate Cracks Further

The air grew heavy.

The skies dimmed.

And from somewhere deep within Blackreach, a new sound echoed

Sobbing.

Not Evelyn's.

But the city's.

Its walls trembled.

Its very soul wept.

And Mira, pale and wide-eyed, whispered: "The veil is thinning. The Gate is waking."

Arlen turned to face the ruined city's center, where the throne of shadows now pulsed like a heartbeat. He knew Evelyn waited there but she was no longer just Evelyn.

She was becoming something else.

And time was running out.