Ashfall Oath

The wind carried the smell of scorched stone and distant blood.

Lynchie's hands trembled, still dusted with the remnants of the Spiral orb that had dissolved in her grip. Her lungs dragged in air like it was half-fire, half-memory. She staggered to her feet, bracing herself against a wall of obsidian etched with runes that shimmered with residual energy.

"You are the Fractureborn."

The words echoed not only in her head, but through every Spiral thread woven into her bones. She didn't know what that truly meant, not yet—but the vision had left an imprint too vivid to forget. Zev. A blade. And the terrifying possibility that the Spiral's resurrection or ruin lived inside her.

She turned her face to the ruin's mouth. Ash was falling from the sky, soft as snow, drifting like the Spiral itself was grieving.

She knew what that meant.

The first battle had begun.

Lynchie broke into a run.

As she crested the ridges, the southern horizon flared—an explosion of emerald Spiralfire curling upward like a scream from the earth. War glyphs pulsed in the clouds overhead, ancient warnings left by the old mages of the First Spiral Era. But they were too late. The clash had begun.

She reached the edge of the cliffs, breath heaving, and beheld chaos.

Below, the Crescent Blades were locked in brutal formation, trying to hold a ravine now swarming with Spiral-born constructs—serpent-like beasts of glass and root, lashing and coiling with unnatural coordination. Tetherweavers flickered in and out of sight, blinking across the battlefield in bursts of lightning-threaded magic. But they were losing ground.

And Zev was at the front.

His coat was shredded, Spiral sigils painted across his shoulders in bright crimson, one side of his jaw streaked with ash and blood. He moved like fury made flesh—his blade dancing in wide arcs of blue-white energy, cutting through enemy after enemy.

Lynchie barely registered herself moving. One breath she was watching from the rise, and the next she was plunging toward the battlefield, her Spiral mark flaring brighter with every step.

The power inside her wasn't a calm surge.

It was a tempest.

She vaulted a shattered pillar and slammed her palm into the ground. Spiral glyphs blazed outward, forming a barrier of jagged crystal that halted an enemy line mid-charge. The force knocked her back—but it worked. The pressure against the Crescent Blades lifted for a moment.

Then Zev saw her.

His eyes locked onto hers, wide with a sudden flash of something between horror and relief.

"You—What are you doing here?" he shouted over the din.

Lynchie didn't slow. "You need me."

His jaw tightened. "You weren't supposed to come back yet—"

"Too bad."

She launched herself past him, the Spiral within her roaring awake like it had been waiting for blood. Her strikes weren't elegant—they were born of instinct, brutal and exacting. Every beast she felled cried out with the same Mirror-Spoken voice: "Fractureborn."

Again and again.

She staggered, almost retching from the recognition.

They knew what she was. Maybe more than she did.

A bolt of red Spiralfire slammed the ridge beside her, and she was flung into Zev. His arms caught her with a grunt, and for a breathless second they were chest to chest, his heartbeat thundering against hers.

"We need to fall back," he murmured against her ear. "They're drawing us out."

"They want me," Lynchie said. "They're calling me their opposite. Or their missing piece."

Zev's hands tightened on her waist. "Then we get you out of here before they take you."

"No."

He pulled back. "No?"

"I'm tired of running from what I don't understand. If they want the Spiral conduit, they'll face it."

"Lynchie—"

"Don't stop me. Not now."

Something in her voice stilled him. He looked at her as if she were changing right in front of him—which she was.

Because in that moment, she lifted her arm and traced a glyph in the air—one not taught by any Spiral master. A glyph from the vision.

It glowed black.

And it opened a fissure.

Spiral threads spilled out like veins of starlight, and the battlefield paused. Even the constructs froze, tilting their heads, sensing something ancient had been unleashed.

Lynchie stepped forward, alone, toward the breach.

"I'm done being a prophecy," she whispered. "I'm becoming a force."

The fissure responded, widening with a low thunder.

And across the battlefield, cloaked in gray robes, a Mirror-Spoken general raised his gaze toward her. A cruel smile twisted his lips.

"She's awakening," he said. "Just as the Fracture promised."

Then the sky cracked.

And war truly began.