Echoes Beneath the Ash

The plaza lay in ruins, the fractured Seal still whispering forgotten songs into the broken sky. Around me, silence reigned—thick, suffocating, as if the world itself held its breath. The relic-sword pulsed at my side, its blade now marked with faint, golden runes that shifted when I wasn't looking.

The visions still clung to my mind like oil. Black suns. Broken thrones. A war that had never truly ended. I shook my head, trying to banish them. There was no time for ghosts.

Somewhere deep beneath the ruins, something stirred. Not with violence or hunger, but with an ancient, mournful weight. I felt it in my bones.

A calling.

I followed the feeling.

The path led me through shattered archways and down crumbling stairways swallowed by shadow. Dust choked the air. Every breath tasted of old stone and older secrets. As I descended, the ruins changed. The architecture became wrong—angles that hurt the eyes, carvings that hinted at things no human tongue could name.

I was trespassing where even time had refused to tread.

Torches mounted along the walls flickered to life as I passed, flames burning cold and blue.

Not magic of the Empire.

Older. Wilder.

The passage ended in a massive hall, half-buried by the collapse of the world above. Pillars jutted from the wreckage like the bones of some forgotten titan. At the center of the hall, seated upon a throne of rusted iron and petrified wood, was a figure.

A man—or what was left of one.

His armor was ancient, patched with scraps of leather and bone. His face was hidden behind a helm fashioned from the skull of a beast, twin horns curling skyward. One gauntleted hand rested on the pommel of a broken sword planted into the ground beside him.

He did not move as I approached.

"Who are you?" I called, my voice echoing unnaturally in the vastness.

For a long moment, there was no answer.

Then, with the slow creak of metal and old sinew, the figure stirred.

"A Warden," he said, voice like dry leaves in the wind. "Once."

His words struck me harder than any blade.

"You... you know what I am?"

The horned helm tilted slightly. "I know what you carry. And what you seek."

He rose from the throne, towering and gaunt, yet there was a terrible strength in the way he moved. As if he bore the weight of centuries with every step.

"How long have you been here?" I asked, throat dry.

He laughed, a hollow, broken sound. "Since the First Sundering. Since the gods fell from the sky and the world burned for its arrogance."

I gripped the relic-sword tighter. "The gods are dead."

"No," he said, voice sharpening. "Only sleeping. Only waiting. And you, Warden... you have cracked their prison."

A chill slid down my spine.

He moved closer, each step sending shivers through the ruined hall. "You think the Empire is your enemy? They are but the hand of a deeper will. You have set yourself against powers that do not forgive. Powers that remember."

I held my ground. "I have no choice."

"Good." His gaze, unseen behind the helm, seemed to pierce me to my soul. "Then listen, and listen well."

He reached up, pulling something from around his neck—a small, tarnished pendant in the shape of a seven-pointed star. He tossed it to me, and I caught it instinctively.

"The Seals you must break are seven," he said. "Each guarded by a Keeper born of the Old War. Each one more terrible than the last."

I glanced down at the pendant. It thrummed with a faint warmth.

"You will not survive them all," he said flatly. "Not as you are."

I gritted my teeth. "Then I'll become more."

Another dry chuckle. "That is the only way."

He stepped back, returning to his throne, the broken sword dragging behind him like a dead limb.

"But know this, Warden. For every Seal you break, the chains loosen. The Old Ones stir. The world will notice. And when the last chain falls..."

He trailed off, the air around him vibrating with something close to dread.

"You will wish you had died at the first."

I pocketed the pendant, feeling its weight settle deep in my chest.

"Is there anything else you can tell me?" I asked.

The horned figure leaned back into his crumbling throne, becoming still once more.

"Follow the black rivers," he said, voice already fading into dream. "Seek the city that floats upon the mist. There, the next Keeper waits."

The torches guttered out, plunging the hall into darkness.

When I blinked and looked again, he was gone.

Only the broken sword remained, jutting from the cracked stone like a gravestone.

And the relic-sword in my hand burned brighter, as if it too had heard the warning.

I turned away, setting my sights on the path ahead.

There was no going back.

Only forward, into the jaws of whatever gods and monsters awaited.

The Last Warden had awakened.

And the world would tremble.