The gate didn't break. It wept . The iron softened, rust flaking like dried blood, then liquefied into a waterfall of red mud. The guards stared. Their screams died when the mud rose and swallowed them whole. Kaelen walked through the slurry, his skin cracking with the effort, old wounds reopening. He was bleeding from a hundred places that had healed years ago.
The Orm laughed. "You're one reborn against forty guards. And that collar—you try to take it off, the poison floods. You know that." tal 39-dorei campaign setting reborn
He unspooled it.
He reached up and grabbed the iron collar with both hands. The poison-trigger flared—he felt it, the black rot surging toward his heart. But three years of stored pain? He redirected it. The collar didn't just unlock. It screamed , a sound like a breaking bell, and the rot reversed course. It flowed out of his veins and into the collar's magic circuitry, overloading it. The gate didn't break
Lirien smiled. It was not a nice smile. "I'm not taking it off. I'm giving it back." The guards stared
"The Guild can burn," Kaelen said. And for the first time in three years, he said his real name. "I am Lirien, Ember of the Ash-Veil, son of a free people who do not yet know they are free."