Each fragment of the crystal still pulsed faintly — a heartbeat that was not his own.
He had won them from the shattered remains of Azamul’s avatar. Yet now, in the long hours after midnight, Khazamyr felt the victory unravel within him.
He pressed his palm to the largest shard. The glass was cool, but something deeper — something beneath the surface of the world — reached for him. His breath hitched. The pulse quickened.
*“Khazamyr…”*
The voice came not from the air, but from within the blood that beat against his temples.
He should have turned away. He should have destroyed the shards with all the fire of the Sun. But the whisper spoke his name as though it had always known him — before his birth, before Ka’Mella had ever been carved from the sands.
*“Fire… is but another name for hunger.”*
His eyes flared, twin embers reflecting the crystal’s scarlet gleam. Around him, the air rippled. The wards he had drawn trembled, then melted into black soot.
Khazamyr’s topknot brushed his shoulder as he bowed lower, trembling — not in fear, but in rapture. The shards pulsed again, and in that rhythm he heard screams, prayers, laughter — the song of a god long unchained.
When dawn came, the structure was empty. Only the ash circle remained, and within it, the faint scent of iron and roses.
And from the dunes beyond Ka’Mella, a plume of fire rose — red shot through with deepest black.
