Kael's footsteps echoed faintly as he left the hidden vault beneath the library.
The last embers of the voice that had spoken in Dareth's tone still burned inside his ears.
> "Your path isn't mine… but even ash knows which way the wind is blowing."
In his left hand, the shard of molten crystal pulsed—alive, as if it had its own heartbeat, one that didn't belong to him.
He didn't return to his quarters.
He didn't speak to anyone.
His body walked as if drawn—toward the ruins of the old flamewatch tower, collapsed on the outer ridge of the western wall.
Legends said it still whispered the names of soldiers burned during the Ember Civil War.
As he neared it, the air thickened—not hot, but heavy, dense with something that remembered.
When Kael raised the shard, a crack formed in the broken stones of the ruins, shaping itself into a doorway that hadn't existed seconds before.
Without hesitation, he descended.
---
The passage below breathed.
Not with air, but with forgotten fire.
Symbols lit up just at the edge of his vision—never fully, never twice in the same place.
He didn't stop to look back.
When the tunnel turned sharply left, a presence awaited him.
Not a spirit.
Not a ghost.
Not a monster.
A figure. White-silver hair. Bare feet on soot. Eyes like broken skies.
They didn't speak.
Mist moved first.
---
The moment the fog rolled forward, Kael stepped into it.
The world tilted.
His own footsteps rang wrong—too late, too early.
A figure mirrored his movement, but it wasn't an enemy. It was him, faster, more certain, impossibly whole.
Kael didn't attack.
He raised his hand—palm open.
And the mist… fractured.
From the silence, a single shard of breathing lava descended—warmer than before, quieter than fear.
He took it. Said nothing.
And walked onward.
---
Far beyond the reach of Virdane's walls, in a chamber of frost and crystal, Baroness Malreth narrowed her eyes.
Ancient flame signatures were rising in the old house.
And in the war council beneath the oceans of Tidesong, Khoren Steelmaw gazed into a rippling scry-pool, lips curling.
"The boy lives," he murmured.
"And the ashes remember."