Setting: Velaris – The Ash Gardens, Royal Sanctuary, and the secretive Catacombs
Theme: Grief, reckoning, buried truths, and a vow that redefines everything
---
[Scene 1 – Ash Gardens of Velaris]
A thousand candles flickered across the Ash Gardens — the burial ground where Velaris honored its dead.
Lyra stood still among the stone pillars, her crimson cloak soaked in moonlight and silence. The wings of flame that had once burned behind her were gone now, replaced by something heavier: grief.
Darien's blades lay across a marble dais, wrapped in silk, untouched by flame.
> "He joked… that if he ever died, it would be doing something stupid," she murmured.
Kaelrin stood beside her, his jaw clenched.
> "He didn't die stupidly."
> "He died for us. Again."
A gust of wind passed between them — warm, despite the hour.
Kaelrin looked up.
> "The flame mourns him."
> "Then the flame remembers what I will not forget," Lyra replied.
---
[Scene 2 – The Confrontation]
That night, in the royal sanctuary's upper chambers, Lyra confronted Kaelrin.
> "The Selarian Priestess said you lied to me," she said. "That you made a choice… to survive the Flame Trial — one that cost others."
Kaelrin's hands gripped the balcony rail.
> "I did."
> "Tell me."
He faced her, shadows under his eyes.
> "There were others chosen before you. I wasn't meant to survive the Trial. I wasn't strong enough."
> "But you lived."
> "Because I sacrificed the others."
Silence.
Lyra stared.
> "You what?"
> "They were meant to bond with the flame. But I found a way to redirect the bond. To make it mine. The temple called it forbidden magic — a siphon."
> "You stole their bond?"
> "I didn't have a choice."
> "And now I don't either," she snapped, voice shaking. "Because I trusted a man who built his power on ashes."
> "I regret it every day."
> "Then regret it alone."
She turned and walked out — the door closing with a quiet finality.
---
[Scene 3 – In the Catacombs]
Later, Lyra descended alone into the Velaris catacombs — a place only the Flame-Touched could access.
There, the walls hummed with ancient whispers. Golden runes lit up as she walked.
> "What am I?" she asked aloud. "What do you want from me?"
A vision surged forward — a memory not her own.
She saw Thorne standing in a blood-lit chamber, a crimson flame circling him, whispering in a tongue that pulsed with power. He held a mirror in one hand — a shard of the lost Sun Relic.
> "If the flame won't choose me… I'll force it to."
Then the vision shifted — to Kaelrin, kneeling before a dying priest, whispering:
> "Let me take their burden. I'll carry it. Even if it kills me."
The vision ended.
And Lyra dropped to her knees.
> "They were both liars… and both broken."
---
[Scene 4 – The Funeral Rebellion]
At Darien's public funeral, hundreds gathered in silence.
Then, one by one, former soldiers of Velaris stepped forward and placed their sigils — their royal badges — beside his swords.
> "This court forgot us," said a young soldier. "But Darien didn't."
> "He was the only noble who fought like he bled like us," another added.
Whispers turned into chants.
> "No crown without the fallen."
> "No flame without the people."
A slow uprising began — not with violence, but with memory.
And from the crowd, a cloaked figure watched.
Thorne.
Alive.
Smiling.
---
[Scene 5 – Shadows Return]
That night, Lyra sat atop the high spire of Velaris, staring at the stars.
> "If you're out there," she whispered, "come back. I don't know who to trust."
The flame pulsed inside her — quieter than before.
> You are becoming more than chosen. You are becoming the truth itself.
Behind her, Kaelrin approached but didn't sit.
> "There's something coming," he said. "Worse than Selaria."
> "Then let it come. I'll burn it too."
He didn't respond.
Because he had seen the final scroll recovered from the Selarian spy…
A name, written in ancient fire script.
Not Thorne.
Not Selaria.
But Sythrial — the original flame god.
And the name Lyra didn't yet know…
Was hers.
---
To Be Continued in Chapter 40: "Names Written in Flame"
Coming Soon:
Thorne's real mission revealed
Lyra learns the truth of her origin
Kaelrin makes a blood pact to redeem his past
Velaris prepares for the final assault… not on Selaria, but something older