Chapter 15 – The Reaper’s Gate
The north was a graveyard of fire.
By the fifth day of their journey beyond Vael'Torin, the land no longer obeyed the rules of nature. Snow fell in crimson flakes, thick and slow, leaving streaks of rust on their cloaks. Trees withered into bone-thin silhouettes, their branches clawing at the sky like desperate hands. The sun never fully rose; instead, it hung dim and swollen on the horizon like an infected eye.
They had reached the edges of the Scarlands.
"The Dominion doesn't cross here," Kael murmured, pulling his scarf tighter against his face. "Even they fear the old flame's rot."
"That's why the Gate is still sealed," Seris replied. "No army dares walk this far north."
Ardyn said nothing. The Sigil beneath his skin had grown hot, pulsing with an urgency that set his teeth on edge. His dreams had changed again—less symbolic now. More visceral. Each night he saw flashes of the Reaper's Gate, a great obsidian arch wreathed in flame, and a figure cloaked in ash standing before it.
Waiting.
Calling.
He didn't know who or what it was, but it shared his eyes.
They camped that night in the remains of a scorched village—nothing left but stone walls, blackened foundations, and a well that ran deeper than it should've. Kael took first watch. Seris traced glyphs into the ground around their fire, casting protective wards with trembling hands. Even she seemed unsettled.
Ardyn stood at the edge of camp, staring out toward the northern ravine where the map said the Reaper's Gate lay hidden.
He whispered to the wind, though he wasn't sure who he was speaking to.
"Why me?"
No answer came.
But the flame in his veins burned hotter.
---
They reached the Gate the next day.
It was not a structure of mortal hands.
The ravine split the earth like a wound, jagged and impossibly deep. And across it, on a thin spit of rock, stood the Reaper's Gate—a towering arc of black obsidian flanked by two broken statues. Their faces were long lost to erosion, but their posture was unmistakable: one hand raised in warning, the other laid across their chests in silent mourning.
The arch itself was smooth, seamless, but across its surface burned a thousand etched sigils—some familiar, most ancient, all pulsing with buried heat.
No bridge led to it.
"Looks like the end of the road," Kael muttered.
"No," Ardyn said softly. "It's just the beginning."
He stepped forward.
The air shimmered around him. The Sigil across his chest flared, burning through his shirt in a spiral of light. The shard hanging at his hip shattered entirely, sending a gust of heat outward. And across the ravine, the Gate responded.
A pathway began to form—fire coalescing into stepping stones, hovering above the abyss.
Kael stepped back. "Ardyn—"
"I have to go," he said, not looking away. "Alone."
Seris grabbed his arm. "You don't know what's on the other side."
"No," Ardyn said, "but I know who I'll become if I turn back now."
Their eyes met.
Seris's grip tightened, then slowly loosened. "Then don't die."
He gave a faint smile. "I'll try not to."
And with that, Ardyn stepped onto the first flame-born stone.
---
The path did not burn him.
Each step sent a thrum through his body, like walking atop the spine of something ancient and sleeping. The further he went, the louder the silence became—thick, suffocating, pressing against his skin like a second cloak.
At the arch's base, a stone pedestal rose from the ground. Upon it lay a scroll bound in iron wire and a blade unlike any he'd ever seen—black as midnight, etched with crimson sigils, its hilt wrapped in scorched leather.
Ardyn reached for the scroll first.
The moment his fingers touched it, the world shifted.
---
He stood not on a cliff, but within a memory.
The sky above was orange with flame. Bodies littered a battlefield, burned and broken. And at the center stood a man—tall, armored in obsidian plates, a Sigil burned into his brow.
Ardyn watched, breath caught.
The man raised the blade—the same black sword Ardyn had just seen—and plunged it into the earth. Fire erupted, not wild but focused, burning through the air like a scream.
And then the man turned… and locked eyes with Ardyn.
"You carry my curse," he said.
Ardyn staggered back. "Who—who are you?"
The vision flickered. The battlefield began to fade.
"I am what you will become, should you fail to master the flame."
"Wait—!"
But the memory shattered, and Ardyn was kneeling once more before the Gate.
The scroll was open now, its writing glowing faintly. A ritual. Instructions. A key to unlock the Gate not just physically—but within himself.
He read the first line aloud.
And the fire inside him roared to life.
---
Back across the ravine, Seris and Kael watched the flames swirl higher.
"Something's happening," Seris whispered.
Kael had his sword drawn. "If he dies, we leave. If he doesn't… we go where he goes."
They waited in tense silence.
Then, suddenly, the sky tore open.
---
Ardyn stood between worlds.
Not dream. Not memory. But something else entirely.
Flames danced around him in a spiral, and at their center hovered the Flame Sigil—no longer etched into flesh, but suspended in the air, alive, watching.
It spoke in no voice, yet he understood.
"Will you be devoured, or will you devour?"
Ardyn didn't answer. Instead, he stepped forward.
The fire surged toward him—and this time, he did not resist.
It burned through every lie he had told himself. Every fear. Every failure. The death of his father. The screams of the day Emberfall fell. The terror of waking with no memory but pain. The guilt. The rage. The loneliness.
He let it all burn.
And when the flames faded…
He remained.
Changed.
The Sigil had fused with his soul—not a brand, but a bond. The sword beside the pedestal flew to his hand, and this time, it accepted him.
Across the ravine, the Gate fully opened.
And the world trembled.
---
He returned to Seris and Kael not as the same man—but not a stranger, either.
Kael took one look at him and lowered his blade. "Well. You didn't explode. That's something."
Ardyn's eyes still burned faintly with embers. "I saw the one who carried this curse before me. He fell because he feared himself."
"And you don't?" Seris asked, searching his face.
"I do," he said quietly. "But I fear what happens if I do nothing more."
She nodded slowly, then extended her hand. "Then let's end this. Together."
He took it.
---
Beyond the Gate lay no paradise.
Only flame and ash and echoes of a world long sealed away.
But for the first time in weeks, Ardyn felt certainty—not about survival, but about purpose.
He was no longer just the cursed heir of Emberfall.
He was its reckoning.
And the true war had only just begun.