Chapter 29: 29 Awoken

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29: Awoken 29: Awoken In the Crest’s visions, Kairan also saw war.

Not just the final duel.

But the seven years that preceded it: the slow, terrible descent of two brothers from love to annihilation.

He saw the first battle, when Kharmul, from his stronghold of Ignimurus, launched the Awoken Legion against the cities loyal to Vezareth.

Demons fused with incandescent metal, warriors who never slept or stopped, who marched across Umbrafluctus like a tide of fire.

He saw Vezareth respond from the Hall of Eternal Ice, marshaling his mages and assassins, weaving shadow traps where entire regiments of Kharmul vanished without a trace.

He saw cities burn.

Bridges crumble.

Armies clashed on the plains of the Abyss in battles that lasted for weeks, where the gray sky was tinged with the red of flames and the black of shadows.

And above all, he saw the two brothers drift further and further apart.

Communicating only through messengers, then only through threats, then not communicating at all.

He saw Vezareth, alone in his crystal hall, gaze at a portrait of his brother and whisper: “Why, Kharmul?

Why have you chosen this path?” And he saw, at the same moment, at the other end of the Tower, Kharmul staring into the fire and answering a question he couldn’t hear: “Because you didn’t have the courage to choose it with me.” The war had no winner.

He couldn’t have one.

Every victory for one was a wound for both.

Every conquered city was a piece of their own kingdom burning.

Until, in the seventh year, they both understood the same thing at the same time: that they could destroy everything, but they could not destroy the other.

In the visions of the Crest, among the images of the Seven Year War, Kairan saw a battle that surpassed all others in horror.

The awakening of the Awoken Legion.

Kharmul, now isolated in the Hall of Unquenchable Fire, had created his most terrible weapon.

He had taken his best warriors, the most loyal, the most ferocious, and fused them with the incandescent metal of Ignimurus.

Demons and steel, flesh and fire, united in a single form that knew no sleep, no pain, no fear.

They never stopped.

They never slept.

Hence their name.

The night he unleashed them against Umbrafluctus, the sky of the Abyss turned red.

The Legion advanced like a tide of molten metal, and everything in its path burned.

The walls of Umbrafluctus, built to withstand any siege, melted in their wake.

The defenders, the mages and assassins loyal to Vezareth, fought with every dark art they knew: they summoned living shadows, set traps in the fabric of reality, cast spells capable of obliterating an army.

But the Awoken did not stop.

A Legion warrior could be cut in half, and the two halves would continue to fight.

He could be reduced to ash, and from the ash he would reform.

They were the nightmare made flesh, and they marched toward the heart of Umbrafluctus, chanting, with voices of metal, the name of Kharmul.

It was Vezareth who stopped them.

Personally.

He stepped onto the battlefield with Vesperthil, and the crimson katana ignited like a second sun.

Wherever he passed, the Awoken did not regenerate: the blade’s eternal fire burned something deeper than flesh, burning the very essence that held them together.

Vezareth danced among them for a day and a night, alone, a figure of flame in a sea of steel, and when the gray dawn returned, the Awoken Legion was no more.

But the price had been terrible.

Half of Umbrafluctus was destroyed.

Thousands of demons were dead.

And Vezareth, standing among the smoking ruins, looked east, toward Ignimurus, where he knew his brother was watching.

“How far are we willing to go?” he whispered.

“To destroy the world we created together?” Far away in the Hall of Fire, Kharmul received news of the defeat.

He didn’t get angry.

He didn’t scream.

Kairan, watching, fully understood the horror of what the prophecy promised.

Not a battle.

Not a duel.

But an endless chain of destruction, in which two brothers, unable to stop, would drag the entire world into the abyss, rather than surrender to each other.

And he wondered, with a shudder, if he and Misael would arrive at the same point.

If one day he would have to burn an army of Awoken created by his brother.

Or if, worse yet, he would be the one to create them.

The vision changed again.

For years, Vezareth and Kharmul had ruled together the kingdom they had forged from nothing.

They had honored the blood oath.

They had built an empire.

But harmony, between those too similar, is the most fragile of constructions.

Until there was only one way to end it: a confrontation that no one could stop.

Alone, as they had fallen from the sky.

Alone, as they had Once sworn to fealty.

They met on Dareth’s Ridge.

Vezareth arrived first, holding Vesperthil, the red-bladed sword glowing like the flame of a never-extinguishing volcano.

Soon after, Kharmul arrived, clutching Threnazar, the blade as black as the starless night, around which gravity itself seemed to bend.

They faced each other.

Only steps apart.

Separated only by the air trembling with their power, and the memories of a time when they had been one soul divided in two bodies.

“We came alone,” Vezareth said, his eyes blazing.

“As true duels should be.” Kharmul responded with a bitter smile.

“Only we two can bear this burden.

Only we can decide which part of this world deserves to survive.” When their blades met, the sound was more than a simple clang of metal.

It was a primordial roar.

An explosion of pure energy that reverberated for kilometers.

The collision created two immense domes of force that rose into the sky like titanic colossi: one red, crackling with burning flames and sparks; the other black, dense, shrouded in a palpable shadow that seemed to suck out all the light.

Those two domes, hundreds of meters high, loomed large in the sky.

Their edges vibrated with power, and their collision produced shockwaves that rippled like earthquakes.