The world above burned red.

  Kael woke to pain before sound—his ribs screaming each time he breathed, his vision pulsing like a dying light. The taste of iron sat thick in his mouth. He tried to move and failed.

  Voices echoed, distant and yered, as if spoken through water.

  “He’s alive.”

  “Barely.”

  “The Halo hasn’t left him.”

  Kael’s eyes opened.

  He y on a stone sb inside a cavern lit by flickering bioluminescent moss. Shadows stretched along carved walls, etched with symbols of circles and wings—variations of the Halo’s shape. Figures stood around him in yered robes, faces hidden behind ash-stained masks.

  Lyra was there.

  She sat at his side, her arm wrapped in blood-soaked bandages, her face hollowed by exhaustion. When she saw his eyes open, something fragile broke—and she ughed quietly, the sound edged with relief and grief.

  “You’re impossible,” she said. “You know that?”

  Kael tried to speak. His throat burned.

  “What… happened?”

  “You fell,” she said. “Gravehound broke you in half. The tunnel colpsed. I thought you were dead.”

  Memories smmed back—steel boots cracking stone, the masked hunter’s grip tightening around his throat, blue energy tearing through his body as the Halo fred against his will.

  “I didn’t beat him,” Kael said.

  Lyra shook her head. “No. You survived him. That’s worse—for him.”

  THE UNDERGROUND

  They called themselves the Ember Below.

  Descendants of cities erased by the Ascendants, they had tunneled into the world’s bones generations ago. Down here, the Ascendants’ satellites couldn’t see. Their drones couldn’t hear prayer.

  The Ember believed the Halo was divine—not a weapon, but a sign. They whispered its name with reverence, etched it into stone, and burned offerings beneath it.

  And Kael carried it.

  Their Elder, Maerin, approached him days ter. Old, thin, her skin cracked like dried parchment, her eyes bright with dangerous certainty.

  “You are not chosen,” she told Kael calmly. “You are cimed.”

  Kael recoiled. “I don’t want this.”

  “No god ever asks,” Maerin replied.

  Lyra watched from the shadows, her jaw tight. She hated the way they looked at him—like a relic, not a person. Like something to be protected… or sacrificed.

  THE TRUTH BETWEEN THEM

  That night, Lyra sat beside Kael as the cavern slept.

  “I never told you everything,” she said.

  Kael already knew that tone. The kind that carried ghosts.

  “The hunter who killed my father,” she continued, “the one who sughtered the rebels… it wasn’t the Ascendants.”

  Kael looked at her.

  “It was him,” she whispered. “Gravehound.”

  Kael’s fists clenched despite the pain.

  “He didn’t just hunt us. He enjoyed it. The Ascendants let him loose when they want rebellions erased without records.”

  She swallowed. “That’s why I needed you. The rebels in the north—they believe the Halo can break the Ascendants’ rule. And you’re the only one who can survive it.”

  Kael stared at the cavern ceiling, at the symbols carved into stone.

  “And if they’re wrong?”

  Lyra met his eyes.

  “Then we die trying.”

  AN OMEN OF FIRE

  The Ember Below celebrated that night.

  They lit fires. Sang old songs. Praised the Halo’s survival. Praised Kael.

  Above them, the world listened.

  Far beyond the tunnels, a lone figure stood amid the ruins of a burned city. His armor was bckened. His mask cracked—but unremoved.

  Gravehound knelt beside the body of an Ascendant officer, neck twisted unnaturally.

  “They hide underground,” the officer had said before dying.

  Gravehound rose slowly.

  “Good,” he muttered.

  And began walking.

  END OF ISSUE #4