The wind screamed over the peaks of Veyrn.
Kael landed hard in the snow, dropping from the skyship with flames already dancing in his hands. He rushed toward the temple ruins near the Mirrorchasm, where he had seen the beacon of windlight explode two nights ago.
At the entrance, he found Serin, wrapped in cloaks, pale and shaking, her eyes unfocused.
"Serin!"
He knelt beside her.
Her eyes snapped to his.
"She's awake," she whispered.
Kael frowned. "Who?"
Serin's voice was hollow:
"The sixth."
By nightfall, the others had arrived.
Lira rode in from the underground rivers to the south, her stone-wrapped boots caked with frost. Corren stepped from shadow, eyes darker than before. Raeh came last — walking through snow with bare feet, her ember mark flickering blue at its edges.
They stood around a new fire in a ruined watchtower overlooking the Mirrorchasm.
"Tell us everything," Lira said softly.
Serin nodded.
And she spoke of Vyrn.
She told them of the woman made of frost and silence.
Of the words whispered into the wind:
The sixth was forgotten.The Crown was never complete.
Kael stared into the flames. "Then the shards… the elements… weren't five?"
Raeh stepped forward. "No. They were six."
The others turned to her.
Raeh lifted her hand. A glowing projection of the original Ember Crown appeared in golden light.
It had six points — not five.
But one had been broken off.
"The original sixth shard," Raeh said, "was ice. Memory. Reflection."
"Vyrn was one of the first. She didn't fall in battle. She was erased."
"Why?" Corren asked quietly.
Raeh hesitated. "Because… she saw what the others would become."
Centuries ago…
When the five elemental lords formed the Crown to protect the world, Vyrn warned that the shards should never be wielded alone.
But she was ignored.
And when she refused to bind her shard to the Crown…
They broke it from her.
And buried it beneath the north.
"She was right," Serin whispered. "We weren't ready. We're still not."
Kael stood. "Then we finish what they started."
Lira nodded. "No more hiding pieces of the world."
Corren drew his blade and let shadow rise from the snow. "We find her. We listen."
Raeh closed her eyes.
"She won't want peace. She'll want us to remember. And remembering may be the hardest thing."
Outside the tower, the snow thickened.
And far below, beneath the Mirrorchasm, Vyrn stood before her throne of memory.
A sixth shard floated above her hand.
Not glowing.
But frozen solid.