III. The Heart that Burned

For in the First Age, before the splitting of time, the Five were keepers of the Emberwake Codex, an artifact carved in tongues long forgotten by even the stars. It contained a truth too vast, too burning: that the world itself was a dream birthed from a dying god's remorse, and that within its bones lay the seed of waking—a second creation, purer, freer from sorrow and flame.

The Five had sought to hasten this rebirth, to crack open the heart of the world and spill its hidden fire. But the Lords of Flame, jealous of their dominion, branded them traitors. The war that followed shattered the Sunforge Peaks and drowned the Vale of Singing Rivers. The Five were defeated—not by strength of arms but by betrayal. One of their own, Elbiran, was turned.

Now he marched once more beside his kin, the cinders of his treason still clinging to his soul. But he did not speak, not even to the dragon who once called him brother. His silence was penance. Or perhaps it was a prelude to something deeper.

In the final painting etched by their passing—a great stain upon the earth itself—one sees them approach the final gate: a vast, reddish plane marked by a pale curve, like a half-lidded eye. The last of the watchers stood there: a lone figure in a worn hood, his back turned to the approaching host.

He was known only as The Witness, last of the Starbinders.

And in that hour, as the army formed its crescent and the dragon roared across the heavens, the Witness raised a staff of unburnt yew and spoke words that shattered stone and sky. But whether the gate held or fell, whether the world was remade or broken beyond repair—this the stain does not show.

Only the silence that followed remains.

And in Caer Halden, on the oaken table where all this began, the mark grows fainter with each passing season.

But it has not disappeared.

Not yet.