"To swear an oath beneath the eyes of the Flame is to offer not your words, but your soul."
—Teachings of the Ember Sect, Volume I
.....
The air inside the forgotten forge tasted of soot and time.
Ash stepped past the obsidian gates, into the heart of a long-buried sanctum beneath Old Terenhold. The chamber was vast, circular, its walls carved from dark volcanic stone and veined with glowing rivulets of amber magma. Ancient glyphs shimmered faintly across the black stone, their meaning lost to centuries of silence.
Overhead, broken chains hung from the cavernous ceiling like the remains of some colossal, long-dead beast. The air pulsed with heat—not suffocating, but alive, as though the forge still breathed in the dark.
Ash's shard, pressed to his chest beneath his tunic, grew warmer with every step.
Lira entered behind him, her mirrored eyes catching the glow of distant braziers. She moved like a shadow, her dagger already drawn—not in fear, but readiness.
"The air here doesn't burn," she murmured. "It remembers."
Ash glanced at her. "You've been here before?"
"No," she said, voice cold. "But my dreams brought me here."
The Wyrm-Priest followed last, his tattered robes dragging behind him. His blind eyes scanned the walls as though he could see more than either of them.
"This is one of the Ember Shrines," he said. "Once, it was where the Path of Flame tempered its champions. Before the Crown shattered."
Ash approached the altar of glass and stone. It was cracked now, veins of black ash splitting its surface. Embedded deep in the center was a bronze crucible—sealed shut by flame-forged sigils.
He reached out.
The Wyrm-Priest raised a bony hand. "Careful. The trial awaits."
"What trial?"
The priest knelt beside the altar. "Each Pathway has its own awakening rite. You've touched the flame, Ash, but to walk the Path of Flame… you must be chosen by it."
Lira's voice was barely a whisper. "Many die in the choosing."
Ash curled his fingers around the hilt of his blade. "And if I survive?"
The priest smiled faintly. "Then the flame will remember your name."
---
The trial began with silence.
No ritual. No incantation. No sacred offering.
Just fire.
The forge chamber began to shift as Ash stepped into the ring of glyphs carved into the stone. The air thickened. Shadows twisted. The altar vanished behind him, and even Lira's presence faded like smoke on wind.
He stood alone.
Flames erupted in a perfect circle around him. High walls of fire, impossible and soundless. The stone beneath his feet glowed red-hot, yet it did not burn him.
Then a voice spoke—not from the flame, but within it.
"Who do you seek to become?"
Ash's breath caught.
He looked around, but saw only fire and darkness.
"I don't know," he said, truthfully.
"Then burn."
The flames surged.
Ash's shard exploded with light—searing pain lanced through his chest and spine as if his very bones were catching fire. He screamed, collapsing to one knee, his breath stolen by heat and agony.
Visions filled the blaze:
His mother, Queen Lysaria, kneeling at a throne of ash.
The Nameless God, unbound, a maw of stars devouring the horizon.
His own face—older, crowned, eyes glowing like embers—standing over a battlefield of corpses.
"The Path does not grant power. It reveals what you already are."
Ash grit his teeth. "I'm not… a tyrant."
"Then burn that part away."
The fire turned black.
---
Outside the circle, Lira watched the flames churn.
The Wyrm-Priest whispered in a forgotten tongue, drawing glyphs in the soot.
"Can he survive it?" she asked.
The priest did not look at her. "If he is his mother's son."
Lira turned her mirrored blade. Reflections flickered within—visions of Ash kneeling in flame, of a shadowed figure watching from beyond the veil.
She didn't trust the flame.
But she feared what lay dormant in Ash even more.
---
Inside the inferno, Ash stood again.
Or thought he did.
He was somewhere else now—on a glass plain beneath a dead sky. The horizon stretched forever, a crimson sea of broken weapons and skeletal crowns. In the distance, a tower burned without smoke.
From the base of the tower, something approached.
A figure in robes of embered silk, face hidden beneath a golden mask shaped like a sunburst. The fire did not touch them.
"You seek power?" the figure asked.
Ash nodded.
"Then take it," said the masked figure. "But know this—every time you use the flame, you burn away a piece of who you were. Eventually, all that remains is fire."
Ash lifted his blade. "If that's the cost, I'll pay it."
The figure chuckled. "We all say that at first."
Then it stepped aside.
The ground beneath Ash cracked. The flame swallowed him again—and this time, it welcomed him.
---
He awoke gasping, lying on the forge floor, steam rising from his skin.
Lira knelt beside him. "You were gone for hours."
Ash sat up. His shard no longer merely pulsed—it glowed, burning through his tunic like a star buried in his chest.
The Wyrm-Priest leaned forward. "Well?"
Ash rose, and the air shimmered.
His blade lit with living fire—not consuming, but alive. It danced along the steel, flickering like breath.
"I saw something," he whispered. "Someone."
"Did they name you?" asked the priest.
Ash nodded.
"Crown's Disciple."
---
They left the shrine in silence.
But their path did not remain quiet long.
---
Just beyond the Bonewalk's edge, they encountered a caravan—slaughtered.
Merchant wagons overturned. Guards with their throats slit. Shardsteel shattered and scattered like broken teeth. The sigil on the wagons: a red coin bleeding from its center.
Lira went pale. "Blood Coin Mercenaries."
Ash crouched beside a corpse. "Why attack this caravan?"
The Wyrm-Priest lifted a scrap of parchment from the dead captain's hands.
"Because they weren't merchants," he said, voice grim. "They were shard-runners. Smugglers."
Ash frowned. "Smuggling what?"
The priest turned the parchment toward them.
A bounty poster. A sketch of a boy with fire in his eyes.
Under it: "Crown Heir – Wanted Dead or Broken. Reward: Three Sovereign Shards."
Ash stared at the image.
Someone knew.
Before he could speak, Lira hissed sharply and vanished behind a broken cart. A figure approached—tall, armored in black shardmail, face hidden beneath a jagged helm shaped like a vulture's beak.
The man carried a war staff crowned with hollowed-out skulls.
"Step aside," he said. "We came for the Heir."
Ash drew his blade. The fire surged.
Lira vanished in a blink—her illusions spiraling.
The priest simply smiled, whispering words from a dead tongue.
The shard bounty had been claimed.
But Ash wasn't ready to die.
Not yet.
> And for the first time, the flame answered not in pain—
but in fury.