The peace was not total. Peace never is.
In the north of the fractured continent, beyond the reach of Shadow's emissaries, where mountains ripped the sky and snow never melted, whispers had begun to stir. Small at first—rumors of an old flame rekindled, of gods that had not truly died.
In the icebound ruins of Vareth-Kaal, a single figure moved through the frostbitten corridors of the once-holy Temple of the Saints.
He had no name, not anymore.
His face was hidden behind a mask of shattered crystal, stitched with red string, marked by burn scars that ran from scalp to chest. He carried a blade that once belonged to a Celestial, corrupted now, humming with foreign wrath.
They called him The Shard.
And he hated Shadow.
Meanwhile, Lidow knelt beside a small garden in the southern Hells. The soil had taken centuries to purify—Volgarr, the old demon gardener, claimed he'd never seen anything like it: "Life in a place of death."
The boy—now nearly a man—dug his fingers into the ground, planting small sprouts with care.
Valarie approached quietly.
"You're patient."
He grinned. "Father says I'll need to be."
She crouched beside him, brushing a lock of silver hair from her eyes. "You remind him of himself."
"That's bad, right?"
She laughed. "Terrifying. But not bad."
In the court of Shadow, darkness brewed not from rebellion, but from ambition.
Kaeth, once a loyal flameborn general, had grown restless. His armies were restless too—trained for war, forged in the old bloodshed, now tasked with patrols and peacekeeping.
It wasn't enough.
"This silence will break us," Kaeth warned Valgorr over blackwine. "We weren't made for waiting."
Valgorr, older and slower now, folded his arms. "Maybe. Or maybe it's time we learned."
But Kaeth's eyes burned. "Shadow sleeps too long. I wonder if he still remembers how to bleed."
He didn't know that Shadow was watching from above—silent, unseen, cloaked in dusk.
And he smiled.
In the mortal lands, where the Light's influence once ruled, only a handful of Lightrunners remained. Most had scattered or fallen. But one—Seraya the Pale—still watched from the shadows of the old faith.
She carried no sword now. Only a single candle.
Waiting for a reason to light it.
The Shard had begun gathering his own.
He wasn't alone in his hatred of the Demon King.
He found broken gods. Fallen warriors. Men who'd lost families in the war. Saints who'd once stood by Kara and Maleik and still carried their names like a wound.
In a chamber deep beneath Vareth-Kaal, he held out the corrupted blade and swore:
"Shadow brought peace, yes. But peace is only silence… before the scream."
The air felt strange in Lidow's lungs.
He stood at the edge of the broken garden, staring up at the scarred crimson sky that always hung over the southern lands of his father's kingdom. Something was shifting. Not in the ground—but in the silence between.
It had been five years since the last rebellion. Five years since peace was declared absolute.
But peace doesn't whisper in the bones like this.
He turned his head as Valarie joined him. She didn't say a word. She didn't need to. The expression on her face said it all.
"He felt it too?" Lidow asked.
Valarie nodded. "Before the tremor, even. Shadow's been silent, but his aura spiked across the realm."
Lidow clenched his fists. "What is it?"
Valarie hesitated. "Old anger. Not from here."
The Shard's armies were not armies in the traditional sense. No banners. No horns. No glory. They were pilgrims of pain, fanatics of memory. They believed the Light had been murdered unjustly, and that Kara's flame had not truly died.
They moved like smoke—through old world rifts, slipping past dead cities and cursed rivers.
They were coming.
And none of the Nine were there to stop them this time.
Because the Nine were gone.
Only Lidow stood now, heir to both rage and radiance. But he had not yet chosen what he truly was.
Later that evening, Shadow emerged from his throne room. The obsidian doors cracked open, revealing the full scope of his presence. His power had grown even darker, heavier with time, but he walked like a man trying not to wake the dead.
Lidow met him on the courtyard steps, wind brushing his black and white robes.
"There's a storm," Lidow said.
Shadow paused. "There always is."
"No," Lidow pressed. "This one's different."
Shadow looked up. His eyes shimmered gold for a second. "The Shard has moved."
"You know him?"
"I knew his master," Shadow said quietly. "A saint who couldn't die right."
They stood in silence, father and son, not warriors, not kings—just shadows and echoes.
Valarie convened with the generals—Kaeth, Valgorr, and the newly risen Nymera, a former archangel who'd defected to their side in the final days of the last war.
"They come from Vareth-Kaal," Nymera said, her wings flickering with dark light. "The city is rebuilding itself, but unnaturally. It's as if the saints' blood has soaked the soil."
"Miracles make the worst weapons," Kaeth muttered.
Valgorr leaned on his hammer. "So we go to war?"
Valarie looked at each of them. "No. We don't go. Not yet."
"What, then?"
"We send Lidow."
Lidow knelt in the ancient temple ruins of Eld'Rass, where his father once broke the chains of hell. His hands trembled as he reached toward the crystal roots embedded in the blackened floor. They pulsed faintly.
He heard her voice—not Valarie's, not even Shadow's. A voice he didn't recognize.
Soft. Sad.
"You will be torn before you are tempered."
Lidow opened his eyes.
And saw a figure of ash and gold.