Void Requiem: Rise of the Godborn

Echoes of the Broken Warden

The scream had not ended.

Though the Warden of Silence lay in ruins, its final sound rang through the realms like the aftermath of a shattered world.

Reality trembled.

Somewhere deep in the Vault of Stars, one of the locks cracked.

And far beyond Kelari, across broken bridges of time and light, old gods awoke.

---

In Kelari...

Matt lay in a healing ward.

His body healed quickly.

But his soul did not.

Every night, he heard the echo—the scream of all those lost, funneled through him like a blade of memory.

Mailane stayed beside him, her hand wrapped gently around his.

"You're not alone," she whispered.

"No," Matt said, eyes fixed on the ceiling. "But I'm still the only one who remembers all of it."

---

That night, when sleep finally came, it did not bring peace.

It brought visions.

He stood in a space beyond time—a corridor of fractured echoes, veined with light and screaming shadows. The Warden's scream repeated endlessly, not as sound, but as visions: burning cities, collapsing timelines, forgotten names carved in dying stars.

And beneath it all...

A door.

Locked.

Cracked.

Bleeding light and shadow.

A voice pulsed from the other side:

"You saw too much. You touched what must not wake."

Matt staggered forward.

"You think truth makes you stronger. But truth devours."

Then silence returned, deafening and absolute.

He woke, breathless, drenched in cold sweat, the voice still echoing in his mind.

And something else—a mark on his chest, faint and flickering.

The Void itself had left him a reminder.

---

Elsewhere, Monshin watched.

The obsidian mirror trembled in his hand.

The Warden—gone.

Thermuz—burned.

The Eclipse Host—faltering.

"He's adapting faster than the timeline allows," said Nimistran beside him, fingers laced with temporal energy.

"It means the Void chose wrong," Monshin growled.

"Or he's rewriting prophecy."

Monshin turned.

"Prepare the Chamber of Infinity. It's time we bring Silithar into play."

Nimistran's smile turned cold.

"You want to unleash a god of forgotten truths?"

"Yes. If Matt Salurga wants the truth so badly... let's drown him in it."

Far from Monshin's tower, another member of the Eclipse Host wandered through ash.

Serahni, goddess of Emberlight, staggered through the wreckage of the shattered sanctum.

She had watched Thermuz burn.

She had felt the Warden's scream carve across the divine.

Now, she stood among dying angels and flickering sigil-fires, their light fading.

"The war has changed," she whispered.

She looked skyward.

"And the heavens are no longer safe."

---

Meanwhile, Matt stood before the Warborn.

He didn't wear armor.

He wore memory.

"We've broken gods. But we haven't broken their chains. That comes next."

"What's the next target?" Sam asked.

Matt looked at the burning stars above.

"The Vault. We take the war to their heaven."

And still, the scream echoed.

Not in the sky, but in him.

And from that echo—purpose was born.

---

March on the Vault

The Sky No Longer Belongs to Them

Matt stood at the edge of the Warborn tower, where once Kelari had smoldered beneath divine flame. Now, it pulsed with renewed fire—his fire.

---

Forging the Skyflares

The Warborn labored without sleep, forging what had never existed before:

Skyflares—airborne warcruisers driven by ancient soulsteel and ignited by aether cores.

Grey commanded the enchantments, bending arcane circuits around hulls like serpents of light.

Sam deciphered the hidden constellations that masked the Vault's true location.

Mailane honed the new division of elite Flamebound, each trained to slay gods.

Below them, a small team of rookies gathered around their first completed skyflare.

"They say Matt killed the Warden by screaming back," one whispered.

"He didn't scream," another replied. "He remembered. And the Warden couldn't survive that."

Sam walked past them, paused, and placed a hand on one boy's shoulder.

"Remember this," she said. "We're not flying into battle for revenge. We're flying to rewrite the world."

---

Later that night, Matt and Mailane stood on the tower's highest landing.

For a moment, neither spoke.

"You don't have to lead this," she said. "You've done enough."

"Then who will?" Matt asked quietly.

Mailane looked away.

He touched her shoulder.

"If I fall, I need you to carry the flame. Not because of the Warborn. Because of them" —he gestured to the stars—"and the chains they still wrap around the world."

She nodded.

"Then don't fall."

---

One Flame

The forge-hall was silent.

Hundreds of Warborn stood shoulder to shoulder—mages, smiths, assassins, broken children turned steel. Some wore cobbled armor. Some wore nothing but sigils burned into skin. But all bore the mark of defiance.

Matt stepped onto the raised platform, his cloak still singed from the Warden's flame.

"I don't want your loyalty," he began. "I don't want your obedience. I want your rage."

He looked across the crowd. No theatrics. No glowing eyes. Just truth.

"I saw what they did to us. To our cities. To our pasts. I saw the sky burn and the silence that followed. We screamed into that silence… and something answered."

A ripple of unease ran through them—but no one moved.

"They call us rebels. Heretics. Monsters. But we are not monsters. We are mortals who refused to kneel."

He raised a fist.

"We are the war the gods were too arrogant to prepare for."

Behind him, the skyflares loomed—engines pulsing, hulls glowing like obsidian hearts.

"They built their Vault to be unreachable. And tomorrow, we reach it."

Sam stepped forward, placing a data-crystal on the holopad beside him. The Vault's constellation lit up above the forge, rotating slowly—a sun trapped in iron, surrounded by sigil rings like blades.

"We breach at orbital sunrise. Three squads per flare. Mailane leads the Ashlight Vanguard. Grey anchors the sigil core. I'll take point."

He looked at them once more—these broken pieces of humanity turned into flame.

"Some of us won't return. Some of us… were never meant to."

"But if we die tomorrow, we die loud enough that the gods remember it forever."

A single Warborn stepped forward, placing a palm to their chest.

"For Kelari," they said.

Another followed.

"For the fallen."

A third.

"For the ones they erased."

Soon, the hall was roaring.

Matt stepped back, not smiling—burning.

Mailane moved beside him.

"Do you think it's enough?"

Matt didn't answer. He just looked to the stars.

> "It has to be."

---

The Rise to the Stars

It's the calm before the divine storm—the Aragorn-before-Black-Gate, the Commander Erwin-before-the-charge, the final address to mortal flames before launching into gods' territory.

At dawn, six skyflares rose from the central forge.

Jet-black hulls, etched with glowing Void runes.

Ashlight thrusters roared like resurrected dragons.

The sky turned gold and black.

The stars, once distant, now loomed like waiting judges. And beyond them—the Vault:

A sealed domain orbiting a dying sun, both fortress and prison, both crown and curse.

Matt stood at the helm of the lead skyflare, his cloak ripping in the wind as divine heat radiated from his chest.

"Today," he said, voice steady, burning, certain—

"We remind the gods... they never owned the sky."

The Warborn roared in answer, and the heavens cracked.

---

Inside the Vault of Stars

Far above, Monshin watched from within the Hall of Infinity.

Fractured mirrors spiraled around him—each one reflecting divergent futures, potential failures, possible dooms.

"They're coming," whispered Analice, her blade drawn, voice like poisoned silk.

"Let them," Monshin said. "We've prepared our endgame."

Behind them, a coffin of cascading light began to fracture.

Silithar stirred.

A voice like unraveling scripture whispered:

"Truth wakes."

"And truth cuts deeper than any blade."

---

Echoes of Fire

Far below, aboard the lead skyflare, Matt's eyes burned gold and black.

The scream had ended.

The war had not.

But in every Warborn soul, in every skyflare rising—

Its echo had become war.