There are doors that open forward.
Others open backward.
But the oldest doors… open inward.
The forest behind the temple felt different by morning.
Still wrapped in mist, but warmer—like the very air remembered them now. The sentinel, cloaked once more, moved with silent purpose through the undergrowth, his wooden staff tapping gently against stone paths that had no right still existing.
Ash and Kael followed.
No words passed between them.
Even Kael, ever skeptical, felt it in his bones: they were approaching something ancient. Something buried not just by time, but by intention.
"How far?" Kael finally asked, his voice low.
The sentinel stopped at the edge of a glade.
"You are already there."
A ring of standing stones emerged from the fog. Each was covered in scorched carvings — sigils in a script that shifted when you tried to read it. The grass between them was charred black, but from its center rose a single sapling, blooming with crimson leaves.
Ash stepped forward.
The air buzzed. The world hushed.
This is it, he thought.
This is where I left her.
He stepped into the circle.
The moment he crossed its boundary, the world changed.
No wind. No sound.
Only flame.
But not burning flame. Not hot or wild. Just light — golden, soft, endless — bathing everything in a low, aching glow.
And then, the sky cracked open.
He saw her.
Floating above the stone circle in the heart of the light. Arms folded over her chest. Hair like starlight. A sigil burned on her forehead — the same sigil that had marked him once, long ago.
Seraphine.
The Flamekeeper.
His sword-sister. His shield. His heart.
Ash dropped to one knee. Not in worship. In sorrow.
"I remember," he whispered.
"I remember the night we lost everything."
Her eyes remained closed.
The sentinel's voice echoed behind him, though his body was no longer there.
"She is not dead. But she does not live. She is sealed in the Veil of Memory, where time cannot rot her… but cannot heal her either."
"Why?" Ash asked.
"Because her flame was too powerful. If she woke before the world was ready, it would ignite again. The gods themselves feared her."
"And yet now…" Kael's voice spoke too, far behind him. "Now something's waking her anyway."
A pulse rippled from her body.
The golden flame turned red for a moment.
Ash stood, fists clenched.
"Who's calling her?"
The mist within the circle thickened.
And a new voice slithered into the air.
Not from Seraphine. Not from the sentinels.
But from the edges of things.
"A shadow deeper than yours, Ash Draven."
"One you buried even deeper than her."
"Vaeroth."
Ash stiffened.
"I bound him. I—"
"You delayed him," the voice hissed. "You caged a wound. But the cage is rusted. The seal is cracked. And even now… your enemies make a pact they do not understand."
A vision shimmered in the mist.
Nobles in a grand hall. Blood spilled in ritual. A summoning circle carved from cursed obsidian.
And in the center—
A black crown with thorns of bone.
Ash felt his heart seize.
"If they wake him…"
"Then she will wake in kind," the voice answered. "But not as you remember her."
"She will wake in fire."
The light vanished.
Ash fell backward, gasping, landing in the scorched grass outside the stone circle. Kael caught him.
"Ash! What happened? What did you see?"
Ash looked up, eyes burning gold.
"The war hasn't begun yet."
"But the board is already set."
"We need to go back."
Kael frowned. "Back where?"
Ash stood slowly, staring at the horizon where Ravenmark lay buried in fog.
"To the capital."
"To the throne."
"Before someone else wears it."
Far away, in the bowels of House Velron's estate, the ritual neared completion.
The nobles chanted. Blood flowed. Candles sputtered with unnatural wind.
The scroll burned.
The seal broke.
And deep beneath the earth, in a tomb with no name, a single eye opened.
Vaeroth had heard his name.
And he was hungry.