The flames had long gone out.
Only smoke remained — drifting, clinging, seeping into stone like it was trying to stay.
Irin sat alone beneath the crumbled archway of the ruined gate. His cloak was torn. His shirt stuck to his skin in places where it had melted into half-healed burns. The mark on his wrist pulsed faintly, not with pain, but with something worse.
Silence.
The Ashstone, always warm, now felt cold against his chest.
Lera sat nearby with Kael, tending to a scratch on his forehead. The boy hadn't spoken since the fight. He just stared at Irin as if trying to decide whether to be afraid or grateful.
Maybe both.
Irin couldn't blame him.
He barely recognized himself.
They left the gate ruins at midday.
The road ahead was uncertain. They couldn't return east — not with the Inquisition's scent still on the wind — and going south would bring them too close to the river towns and Mage patrols.
That left one option: deeper into the city.
Toward its core.
Toward whatever remained of the Ashborn's past.
As they walked, the city changed.
The buildings here were older — not just broken, but twisted, like they'd been torn apart by a storm that had come from the inside out. Balconies hung at impossible angles. Stone steps led into collapsed ceilings. Trees grew sideways, roots tangled in shattered mosaics.
The sky overhead dimmed, though no clouds covered it.
Even the light felt... bruised.
Lera noticed it too.
"This place isn't dead," she said, low. "It's still bleeding."
Kael walked beside her, gripping her sleeve.
Irin didn't reply.
He felt the Ashstone warming again.
Calling.
They reached a large plaza just before dusk.
In its center stood a massive black spire — collapsed, but intact in shape, like a sword plunged into the earth.
Around its base were seven stone arches, each etched with a different sigil. One was cracked. Another had been scorched clean. The others… pulsed faintly, as if they remembered being awake once.
Irin stepped into the ring of arches.
The moment his boots crossed the circle, the Ashstone glowed.
So did the symbol on his wrist.
Kael gasped. "I feel it too."
Lera glanced between them. "This is another site, isn't it? Like the temple. Like the library."
"No," Irin said. "This is older."
The arches began to hum.
A low, harmonic sound — too deep for any throat, too complex for any machine.
The ground trembled.
Then — a voice.
Not loud.
But everywhere.
"You enter the Circle of the Hollow Flame."
Irin's body froze.
Not with fear.
With recognition.
He knew that name.
The Hollow Flame.
One of the Ashborn orders.
Whispers from the temple came back to him — names of lost lineages, each tied to a flame that had once burned with purpose.
The Hollow Flame was said to guard what was never meant to be found.
"Three marked have entered. Two awakened. One uncertain."
Kael stepped back. "It's talking about us."
Irin took another step.
The sigils above the arches burned brighter.
"The Ash remembers. The Ash burns. The Ash chooses."
Suddenly, the spire cracked open.
Not physically.
Visually.
A seam of fire appeared down its center — but there was no heat. Only light. Inside, shadows danced. Figures moved. Echoes of battles long lost. Ashborn fighting in circles, side by side. One of them wore Irin's mark. Another — Kael's.
And then, one figure stood apart.
His mask was shaped like a flame.
His hand held not fire — but a chain.
Lera gasped. "That's—"
"Sirat Nol," Irin finished.
The vision vanished.
The light dimmed.
The voice returned:
"The traitor who chose silence over flame. He sleeps beneath."
Beneath?
Lera looked at Irin. "There's something down there."
Irin knelt, brushing his hand across the center of the spire's base. The stone responded — a faint shift, a ripple. Then — a staircase spiraled downward, revealed by retracting stones.
He stood.
Kael didn't move.
"Stay here," Irin said. "Both of you."
Kael opened his mouth to protest — but Lera placed a hand on his shoulder.
"He's not asking."
The descent was long.
The deeper Irin went, the quieter the world became.
Not with silence.
With memory.
He felt whispers brushing against his ears. Not voices. Feelings. Reminders of those who had walked here before.
At the base of the stairs lay a chamber lit by a single blue flame, hovering mid-air above a pedestal.
Around it were seven empty thrones.
Each bore a different emblem — all scorched.
Only one throne was untouched.
Its emblem was the Hollow Flame — a spiral folding into itself.
Irin stepped forward.
"You have come to claim the weight," the chamber whispered.
He frowned. "What weight?"
"The burden of memory. The path of fire. The key."
A pulse hit his chest.
The Ashstone leapt from beneath his cloak, floating toward the flame.
The two touched.
And then — everything shattered.
He stood in a battlefield.
But it wasn't a place.
It was a mind.
His?
No.
Sirat Nol's.
He saw flashes:
A young Ashborn begging the Circle to listen; cities falling, not from enemies, but from their own flames; people burning — not by choice, but because they couldn't stop; a gate opening — massive, black, endless; and behind it… something watching
Then Sirat — older, colder — standing before the thrones, voice shaking:
"I will seal it. Even if I must kill them all."
And then — fire.
And chains.
Irin collapsed back into the chamber.
Gasping. Trembling.
The flame above the pedestal flickered, then split — half entered the Ashstone. Half burned into his wrist.
A new mark formed beneath the old.
The seal of the Hollow Flame.
"You are now its witness," the voice whispered."And its key."
When Irin returned to the surface, it was night.
Lera was waiting. Kael had fallen asleep beside her.
She stood as he approached.
"Well?" she asked.
He looked at her.
"I know why Sirat did it."
Lera stiffened. "And?"
He sat beside her, exhausted.
"He was right."
She didn't answer.
They sat in silence for a long time.
Finally, Irin looked up at the stars above the dead city.
"I think the fire… it isn't the danger."
Lera tilted her head. "Then what is?"
He closed his eyes.
"The reason it was born."