He didn't bleed. Not anymore.
The Shard stood alone at the mouth of the ruined sanctum, a place once sacred to the Lightbringers. Now, its stained-glass windows were shattered, and the symbols of hope defaced by a black, living growth that pulsed with strange life.
He didn't care for symbolism.
He cared for vengeance.
Behind him, his followers knelt—silent, veiled in tattered robes, eyes filled with fire and frost. These were not mortals. Not anymore. Saints who had broken themselves on the anvil of war, disciples reborn in grief and fire.
But even they dared not speak.
Only the wind moved, hissing through the jagged remnants of holy stone.
The Shard finally spoke:
"It took decades for the Light to die. They say Shadow killed it. I say it surrendered."
One of the followers dared to raise their head. "And you will return it?"
"I will return the judgment it failed to give."
He turned toward the statue behind him—the cracked remains of Kara, the once-radiant warrior who died in the Great Betrayal. Her face was broken, but the sword she once held remained buried in the earth, rusted but unbent.
"The boy is coming," said the follower.
The Shard's eye twitched. "Yes. Lidow. The heir of contradiction. The fruit of Shadow's sin."
"He holds both flames."
"All the more reason to extinguish him before he understands how to burn."
Far beneath the sanctum, a new being stirred.
The Shard descended into the darkness, passing through crumbling catacombs and whispering bones. He lit no torch; his path glowed faintly with violet light, flickering from runes etched into the walls in blood and broken prayers.
At the heart of the abyss lay the Vessel.
It was a cage, but not made of steel. It was forged from memory, sealed with remorse. Inside, curled like a starving beast, was something once known as "The Third Voice" — a fragment of the original Flame, twisted during the fall.
The Shard knelt before it, laying a single black feather upon the threshold.
"You will speak when he arrives," the Shard whispered. "And when he does, you will show him what his father buried."
A groan escaped the cage—half sob, half laugh.
"I will remind him what it means to carry both fire and shadow."
Elsewhere, his lieutenants gathered.
There were three:
Sevrin, the Bone-Wright, a skeletal sorcerer who once served the Nine before defecting to the Shard's cause.
Myra of the Folded Sky, a former celestial assassin now turned heretic, who wore mirrors as armor and wielded light like a scalpel.
Thresh, a mute brute who had eaten seven angels and still bore their wings in chains upon his back.
They waited before him in silence.
"The boy comes," the Shard told them. "Do not kill him. Wound him. Break him. Let him crawl."
Sevrin smiled with no lips. "A fallen prince makes a better prophet."
"And when he calls for help?" Myra asked. "From his father?"
The Shard turned, his voice as cold as the black stars.
"Let the King of Hell come. Let him watch his world burn from the outside in."
Back in the land of ash, Lidow stood at the threshold of Vareth-Kaal.
He could feel the presence waiting within—something ancient, something bleeding through time.
His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword, a blade forged from both flame and abyss.
And somewhere far away, Shadow opened his eyes.
"Don't die, my son," he whispered. "Not yet."