The Unfinished Circle
The air was thick with the scent of burning metal, a sharp tang of alchemy in its rawest form. Ash drifted through the cavernous expanse of the chamber, a whisper of the past hanging in the air like the last breath of a dying man. Alaric stepped forward, his boots crunching against the fragments of shattered glass.
The legacy lay before him.
An ancient forge, silent yet alive.
Its iron maw yawned open, the coals within long extinguished, yet still smouldering with something unseen. The walls around it bore inscriptions—runes that pulsed with an eerie phosphorescence, as if whispering secrets in a language no human tongue had spoken in centuries.
But it was what stood at the centre of the forge that made Alaric's breath hitch.
A figure.
Or rather, what remained of one.
The Keeper of the Flame
It had once been a man. That much was clear. The skeletal frame was draped in tattered robes that had once been woven with golden thread, now blackened and fused with the remnants of time itself. But the face—oh, the face—was something else entirely.
Where flesh should have rotted, it had transmuted into something far worse. A mask of glass, seamlessly fused to bone, fractured yet whole. The cracks ran deep, glowing faintly, as if something within was still alive.
Then, the voice came.
Not spoken. Not heard.
But felt.
A pressure against the mind, a weight pressing against the fabric of reality itself.
"You seek the end of the circle."
Alaric's breath hitched. He did not move.
The glass-faced figure tilted its head. The cracks in its mask widened slightly, revealing the flickering glow beneath—a fire that should have long been extinguished.
"I know you," it continued, voice woven with echoes of a thousand lifetimes. "I have seen you before."
Alaric's fingers twitched toward his belt, where the fractured remains of his sword rested. He did not unsheathe it.
"Who are you?" he asked.
A slow, deliberate exhale from the figure.
"I am what is left. What remains when the alchemy is complete. I am the last truth that men refuse to face."
The glow in its fractured face intensified, shifting, coiling like molten gold trapped beneath a fragile layer of glass.
"And now, I will ask you a question, Alaric. One that will decide the fate of all you have fought for."
The chamber darkened, as if reality itself recoiled.
"What will you forge from what is left of you?"
The Fire and the Choice
The question hit like a hammer, striking deep into Alaric's core.
What was left of him?
He had walked through fire, through betrayal, through the weight of destiny's chains. He had watched everything he had ever known break.
And now, at the end of it all, the final test was not a battle.
It was a choice.
The forge waited. The glass-faced figure watched. The weight of all those who had come before him—those who had tried, those who had failed—hung in the air like a ghostly audience.
A whisper slithered through the chamber.
Not from the figure.
Not from the runes.
From the glass itself.
"Choose."
Alaric took a slow, measured breath. His fingers brushed against the remains of his blade—the steel that had carried him through every trial, now nothing but shattered pieces.
Then, he stepped forward.
His hands found the hilt of the sword.
But instead of drawing it, he placed it upon the forge.
A heartbeat.
Then—
The coals ignited, roaring to life with a flame unlike any he had ever seen. Not red. Not orange. But a deep, almost abyssal gold, like the last dying light of a sun collapsing into darkness.
The glass-faced figure did not move.
But the fractures in its mask deepened.
The Shattering of Fate
Alaric did not hesitate.
He reached forward—and plunged his hands into the fire.
The pain was immediate, blinding, a white-hot agony that tore through every nerve, every bone, every fragment of his existence. But he did not withdraw.
Because in the fire—he saw.
Not just his past.
Not just his failures.
But the truth of the alchemy.
Everything had been leading to this.
The broken glass, the shattered blade, the weight of prophecy—none of it had been about destruction.
It had been about transmutation.
He screamed, not in pain, but in understanding.
The forge roared, the flames swallowing the sword, swallowing the glass, swallowing him.
And in that moment—
The mask of the figure shattered.
The fire consumed everything.
And the chamber ceased to exist.
The Birth of a New Legend
When Alaric opened his eyes, he was no longer in the forge.
The world was different.
The air smelt of morning rain, fresh earth, and something unnamable. The sky above was not the endless abyss of his nightmares, nor the fractured glass of a dying world.
It was whole.
And so was he.
He looked down at his hands.
The scars were gone.
The weight of his past no longer clung to him like an iron shroud.
And in his grasp—
A new blade.
Forged from fire, from glass, from everything he had lost and everything he had become.
The alchemy was complete.
The circle was no longer broken.
And Alaric—
He was no longer just a man.
He was the last alchem
ist.
The final legend.
The one who had shattered fate—and remade it in his own image.