The Ashes of the Past
The world was not as it had been.
Alaric stood at the edge of the forge, the heat long extinguished, yet the embers of its existence still pulsed in the air like dying stars. His hands, once worn by battle and time, now held a new weight—the blade forged from glass and fire, from loss and revelation. The echoes of the past still whispered in the air, but something had shifted.
Something was ending.
And something else was beginning.
The sky above was neither the abyss of darkness nor the fractured reflections of glass. It was something in between—a liminal space, a threshold between worlds. And at the centre of it all, a path stretched forward, paved not with stone or dust but with memories crystallised in time.
Alaric took a step, and the world shuddered.
The final trial was not yet over.
The Keeper Returns
A shape emerged from the haze ahead.
Not a man.
Not a spectre.
Something in between.
It was the glass-faced figure, but it was no longer confined to the shadows of the forge. The fractures in its mask had deepened, revealing the molten gold within—a fire that had burnt through lifetimes.
It spoke, but not with words.
It spoke through the wind, through the ground, through the weight of existence itself.
"You carry the last flame."
Alaric's grip tightened on his blade.
"And yet you do not understand what must be done."
The voice was not cruel, nor was it kind. It was inevitable.
Alaric's chest ached. He had survived the forge. He had shattered fate. But something still remained.
Something he had not yet faced.
The glass-faced figure stepped forward, and with every movement, the air around it warped, as if reality itself resisted its presence.
"The flame is not yours to keep."
A silence fell between them, heavier than any battlefield, darker than any abyss.
And then—
The ground beneath Alaric cracked.
A chasm opened beneath his feet, a gaping wound in the fabric of the world. And from it, hands emerged—shadowed, skeletal, reaching, clawing for something unseen.
The past had come to claim him.
The Trial of the Departed
Alaric stumbled back, but the hands did not relent. They reached for his blade, for his soul, for the flame that burnt within him.
Faces formed within the abyss.
The lost. The forsaken. The betrayed.
Every soul that had been left behind in the wake of his journey, every life that had been touched by the alchemy of his choices.
And then, among them—
A voice he knew.
"Alaric."
His breath caught.
It was her.
The one who had once stood beside him, before the betrayals, before the trials, before the world had twisted into something unrecognisable.
Her eyes were not filled with accusation.
They were filled with understanding.
"The flame is not yours to keep," she whispered. "It must be passed on."
A wave of agony crashed over him, not physical but something deeper. He had spent his life fighting, forging, transforming. He had believed that survival was the goal, that wielding the flame was the final step.
But it wasn't.
He was never meant to carry it forever.
The Sacrifice of Fire
The abyss widened, swallowing the world around them.
The hands reached higher.
The past threatened to consume the present.
And Alaric—
For the first time in his journey—
Let go.
He raised the blade, the flame roaring within it. The glass shone with the light of a thousand broken stars. And then—
He drove it into the ground.
The world exploded.
Flame and glass erupted, spiralling into the void, shattering the grasp of the past, burning away the shadows, illuminating the darkness with something new.
Not destruction.
Creation.
The hands recoiled, the abyss closed, and the weight of countless lives was lifted from his shoulders.
The glass-faced figure staggered, cracks spreading through its form. It laughed—not in mockery, but in relief.
"You understand now."
Alaric fell to his knees, his chest heaving.
He had wielded the flame.
But it was never his to keep.
The forge had never been about making him stronger.
It had been about making him a vessel—a conduit through which the flame could pass to the next.
He looked down at his hands.
They were empty.
The blade was gone.
The fire had moved on.
And yet—he felt whole.
The End of the Alchemist
The sky above shifted, no longer fractured, no longer caught between realities.
It was clear.
The glass-faced figure—what remained of it—nodded once.
"You are ready."
And with that—
It shattered.
The final remnant of the past, the last chain of fate—gone.
Alaric rose to his feet.
He was not what he had been.
He was not the warrior.
He was not the
alchemist.
He was not the chosen.
He was simply Alaric.
And the world was waiting.