Emberfall: The Man Who Lit the Dying Suns
By: Alexander Frick
Prolog:
Before the Flame chose Him.
They say Kael Thira was once a world of harmony, where the thrones of the elements hummed in balance–Flame, Frost, Stone, Wind, Tides, and Void. Each held dominion not over domination, but over rhythm. Over life. The suns sang. The seas danced. And every breath the people took was a shared promise with the land.
But promises break.
And gods… hunger.
The Ascendants came from within–not alien, but born of ambition. Mortals who drank from the thrones too deeply, seeking power without purpose. They tore the balance apart, drained the elements until only ruin remained. The Frost lands cracked. The Winds grew silent. The void… awakened.
And then the suns began to dim.
Hope faded, swallowed by time and ash. Heroes rose and fell, legends written in blood and buried beneath centuries of dust. The prophecies turned cold. The world waited–but for what, no one could say.
Until one day, beneath the scorched breath of two dying suns, a stranger fell into the sand.
No army. No armor. No name known to the stars.
Only flames.
Wild. Untamed. Ancient.
And in that flame, Kael Thira did not see salvation.
It saw the final gamble.
Chapter 1: The Heat of Awakening
The first sensation was heat–unforgiving, dry, ancient. Thorne gasped as his eyes blinked open to twin suns blazing over a red-hued desert. The sky was pale violet, and the air shimmered with static energy. His skin itched from the grains of luminous sand that clung to him. There were no roads, no towers, no sound–just the wind whispering across an alien wasteland.
He pushed himself upright, confused. His last memory was back on Earth–reaching for a wrench in his garage, the familiar smell of oil and metal filling his nostrils. Then, nothing. Now this.
Something wasn’t right with the sand. It pulsed beneath him. When he placed his hand on it again, the ground trembled–and suddenly, a golden glow coursed from his fingertips. Dust lifted around him, forming a swirling ring of light.
A whisper echoed in his mind.
“Breathe. Open. Awaken.”
Then came the pain. Liquid fire rushed through his veins. He screamed, clutching at his chest as tendrils of raw energy arced from his body. The sky darkened for a moment, reacting to him. When the storm died down, he collapsed, trembling and scorched.
Throne wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t a hero. Just a mechanic from Philly.
But the world had different plans.
Chapter 2: Prophecy in the Dust
He wandered aimlessly for hours before spotting something on the horizon–stone structures half–sunken into dunes. A village. Skeletal, silent. As he approached, figures emerged, tall and robed in wind-worn linen.
One child ran toward him, eyes wide with awe. “You carry the ember.”
Thorne blinked. “The what?”
An elder appeared, leaning heavily on a staff carved from obsidian bone. Her voice cracked with age, but her haze was unwavering. “The Ashen Flame. It is you. The prophecy speaks of one cast from the stars who shall reignite Kael Thira.
“Look, lady, I don’t know who you think I am–”
“You touched the walking sand. You bear the light. Whether you believe it or not, it believes in you.”
They brought him inside, gave him water laced with herbs that shimmered silver in the cup. As he drank, he felt warmth bloom through him–not just from the tea, but from the people. They feared him, yes. But they also hoped.
That night, he stared at the twin moons above and whispered to the stars: “What the hell is happening to me?”
He got no answer–only the faint echo of a phoenix’s call riding the wind.
Chapter 3: Fire Without Control
Power surged within him, but it was wild. On his third day in the village, he tried to heat water and ended up melting the clay pot. A passing thought about warmth accidentally turned into a firestorm that scorched an orchard. The villages grew distant.
Whispers began. Harbinger. Pretender. Flame-touched.
He tried meditating, fasting, begging for the power to stop–but the more he resisted, the more it grew. At night he would wake with burning hands, his bed smoldering.
“I can’t do this,” he muttered, sitting in the ashes of a burned hut. “I’m not a chosen one. I’m a walking disaster.”
The elder found him there. “Fire doesn’t ask permission to burn,” she said gently. “But it can learn to warm instead of destroy.”
He didn’t believe her. But he stayed.
Because deep down, he wanted to matter.
Chapter 4: When the Riverborn Came
It happened under a blood-orange sky.
Screams shattered the air. The Riverborn–gaunt, bone-armored wraiths with hollow blue-eyes descended on the village like locusts. Thorne ran toward the chaos, hands glowing uncontrollably.
“Get inside!” he shouted, though his cracked voice with uncertainty.
He tried to fight, but for every one he incinerated, three more rose. They overwhelmed the guards. A child was dragged into the sand. The elder fell, her chest pierced by bone.
“No,” Thorne whispered.
Then, the whisper returned.
“Remember who you are.”
Golden light erupted from his chest. A blade formed in his hands, forged from living flame. With a cry, he surged foward.
Each strike was a dance. Every motion, a declaration.
And then–he slammed his fist into the ground.
A Phoenix burst from his body, spiraling skyward in a cyclone of fire. It shrieked and consumed the invaders in one sweep.
THe silence that followed was broken only by the wind–and the sound of Thorne collapsing in the sand, unconscious but victorious.
Chapter 5: Hero Forged in Ash
He awoke days later, wrapped in ceremonial silks. The villagers no longer whispered in fear. They sang his name.
Thorne.
Ashen Flame.
Savior of the sands.
He stood on the village edge and looked out toward the horizon, feeling something different in his bones. Not just power, Purpose.
When a messenger from a distant city arrived on the back of a wind-drake, begging for help, Thorne didn’t hesitate.
“Pack my things,” he said. “Let’s find out what else is broken in this world.”
Chapter 6: The Rise of Emberfall
Thorne’s legend spread like wildfire. He shattered the corrupted Wind Throne with a bolt of lighting channeled through flame. He saved a floating city suspended by singing crystals. In the flooded south, he calmed a raging sea titan with a whisper.
Still, at night, he dreamed of Earth. Of being small. Forgotten.
“Why me?” he asked the stars.
A dream-voice answered. “Because even sparks become stars when they burn long enough.”
His power grew–not just in strength, but in control. The flame, no longer consumed. It guided.
But with every victory, he knew it would end at one place:
The Void Throne.
Chapter 7: Into the Void
Nyros Spire loomed like a needle against the dead sky. No stars shone above. The wind here was still, listening.
Inside, time fractured. Thorne walked through visions of his failures–on Earth, in Kael Thira. Each whispered his fears.
“You’re not meant to save anyone.”
“You’ll fail.”
“You’re just a spark in a storm.”
He stepped forward anyway.
The final chamber held a mirror. In it stood a twisted version of him. Cloaked in black fire.
“I am what you’ll become,” it said.
“No,” Thorne said, shattering the glass with one pulse of golden light.
“I am what I chose to be.”
Chapter 8: Solgrave Ascends
Solgrave, the first Ascendant, waited in a void throne carved from nothingness. A god of decay. Of entropy. His voice echoed in a thousand broken tongues.
“You are trespassing. An anomaly.”
“I’m the one who ends you,” Thorne said, lifting his flame-sword.
Their battle tore through dimensions–one of darkness, the other of light. Solgrave devoured elements and launched despair as a weapon. Thorne answered with hope. He burned failure into fuel. Pain into purpose.
When Solgrave summoned the Eclipse Cry–a spell that erased timelines–Thorne caught it in his chest, held it…
…and turned it to light.
With a roar, he plunged into the Void Throne and ignited it from within.
Chapter 9: The Man Who Stayed
Kael thira breathed again.
The twin suns glowed brighter. Rivers returned. The children laughed. Villages rebuilt. The elemental thrones awoke, balanced.
Thorn emerged from the spire, skin charred, heart steady. He was offered crowns, statues, and cities.
He refused them all.
“I don’t need to rule,” he said. “I just needed to matter.”
He wandered the world, helping where he could. Teaching fire to children. Healing wounds with warmth. He never returned to Earth. But sometimes, late at night, he’d whisper to the sky:
“I hope you’re proud of me, old life.”
And somewhere beyond the stares, the whisper answered:
“You were always meant to burn.”
Epilogue:
After the Flame Died Down.
Kael Thira healed. Slowly. Quietly. The cities, rebuilt with stone and song. The skies, though never as blue as they once were, held warmth again. Children born under new suns played in fields once drowned in shadows.
And the name of Thorne Emberfall became legend.
Some said he became a god and walked among the stars. Others whispered he lives still, hidden in the wilds, a wanderer teaching fire to forget how to burn. But no one had seen him since the fall of Nyros Spire.
Until now.
High in the north, past the glacial graves where no heat should reach, a fire was seen burning.
Not a wild one. Not destructive. But constant. Controlled. A signal.
And in the center of it, a figure stood–cloaked, tall, quiet–his eyes glowing faintly gold.
He faced the horizon, where the sky cracked faintly with violet lighting.
A new storm was coming.
He turned, drew his blade from earth, and whispered into the wind:
“Not again.”
And then he walked into the dark.