"Cursed fire does not warm—it remembers. And remembering burns."
—Fragment from The Seer's Descent, banned manuscript
....
Ash couldn't sleep.
Not in the old forge, not with the embers still humming around him like ghosts with unfinished vows. The obsidian doors stood sealed behind them now, warded by Lira's mirrored glyphs, but he felt it in the air—that something had shifted. His flame was no longer a flicker. It had a rhythm now. A heartbeat.
Beside him, Lira rested lightly, one eye half-open behind a veil of dark hair. She didn't trust the dark any more than he did.
"Are you going to keep pacing until sunrise?" she muttered without looking.
"Can't stop thinking about what I saw," Ash replied. "That… other me. The fire-crowned boy. What was that?"
"A vision. A warning. Or the shard whispering madness. Pick one," Lira said, turning on her side. "The Path of Flame burns through illusions. Sometimes it shows you what might be."
Ash rubbed his eyes. The warmth in his chest pulsed again.
"I don't think it was just a vision," he said quietly. "It felt real. Like I was already him. Or like he was waiting for me to catch up."
Lira didn't answer. The silence that followed was heavy and long. Only the forge's last embers crackled in the dark.
---
They left before dawn, tracing the old canal paths toward the outer ring of Terenhold. Their destination: the Hollow Archives—an underground library buried beneath the city's eastern cliffs. According to the Wyrm-Priest, the Archives held one of the Crown's oldest texts: a codex known as The Firetongue Canticle, said to name every Shardbearer of Lysaria's line.
And perhaps more importantly—it might tell Ash where the other shards had gone.
But Ash was not the only one hunting them.
---
The Hollow Archives were guarded by more than dust.
As they reached the rust-choked gates of the eastern crypts, Ash felt the first chill run through him. The warmth of his shard dimmed, suppressed by something deeper—older.
Lira stopped short.
"Something's wrong," she whispered. "The veil here is thinner. Do you hear that?"
Ash strained his ears.
Whispers. Dozens of them. Layered, distant, overlapping.
"…he comes…"
"…flame reborn…"
"…unbind the chains…"
Ash stepped forward, but Lira caught his arm.
"We're not alone."
Out of the mist, figures emerged—draped in charcoal robes, their faces marked with cinder paint and stitched smiles. The cultists knelt before a single, towering figure draped in a shroud of smoke and bone.
"Welcome, heir of the pyre," the figure intoned. "We've awaited your flame."
Ash raised his blade. "Who are you?"
"I am Emberscourge," the man said, voice rasping like a forge bellows. "First Inquisitor of the Broken Pyre. We are the ones who remember the true fire—the fire that unmade the gods."
Lira stepped in front of Ash, her dagger ready. "What do you want?"
"You carry the central shard," Emberscourge said, gesturing with an open palm. "It belongs to the flame. To Him. Return it, and be purified in glory."
Ash narrowed his eyes. "Him?"
"The Nameless God," Lira whispered. "They think the fire belongs to the one Lysaria sealed."
Emberscourge smiled. "Not think, girl. Know."
He raised his staff.
The mist erupted.
---
The battle was chaos.
Ash's blade lit the dark with a stream of fire. Lira danced through illusions, creating afterimages of herself and Ash to confuse the cultists. But Emberscourge moved like a phantom. His staff channeled fire that wasn't flame—it devoured light, twisting into something black and writhing.
Ash met him head-on, flame against hollow fire.
"You twist the flame," Ash growled.
"I free it!" Emberscourge bellowed.
Their shards clashed—one pulsing with molten heat, the other radiating an empty chill. Sparks burst around them, shattering bones and glyphs carved into the floor.
Lira flanked him, her dagger gleaming with mirrored light. For a moment, Emberscourge faltered—his twisted flame flickered—
And Ash struck.
The fire that erupted from his blade scorched the stone, carving a searing arc across Emberscourge's chest. The Inquisitor screamed, stumbled, then vanished in a cyclone of burning mist.
Ash staggered, chest heaving.
"They'll come again," Lira said, brushing ash from her arm. "That wasn't all of them."
Ash nodded, heart pounding. "Then we find what we need before they do."
---
The Hollow Archives were vast—a labyrinth of stone and silence beneath the city. Columns of cracked obsidian stretched into endless halls, every wall etched with forgotten tongues. Fireflies of mirrored light—Lira's work—floated ahead, casting shadows that danced like ghosts.
They searched for hours.
Finally, behind a sealed vault bound in flame-script, Ash's shard pulsed hot.
The door opened to a chamber of ash and crystal. At its center rested a lectern—and upon it, a single book, sealed in dragon glass.
The Firetongue Canticle.
Lira reached for it, but the book flared with sudden light.
Ash stepped forward. The shard at his chest blazed—and the seal parted.
As he opened the tome, lines of glowing script unfolded across the air like wings of fire.
Lira gasped. "This isn't just a list…"
Ash nodded slowly, reading. "It's a map. A record. Every bearer. Every shard. And every betrayal."
His hand trembled as he reached the final page.
A blank space.
Then, a new name appeared.
Eshkarion Lysarion.
Crown's Disciple.
Path: Flame. Status: Incomplete.
Next Shard: Frostbound Sigil – Held by the Exiled Heir of Veyr.
Ash turned to Lira.
"Kael," she said softly. "The frost prince."
Ash nodded. "Then we head north."
Lira frowned. "The Frost Courts are ruled by enemies of your mother. And Kael Draven is said to have vanished years ago."
Ash's eyes burned with resolve. "Then we find him. And if he won't give the shard…"
He closed the book with a thud, the flame around him rising like a crown.
"…I'll take it."
---
Preview of Chapter 5:
In the frozen north, the court of ice awaits—and not all ghosts there are buried. Betrayals stir beneath frostbound palaces… and Kael Draven may no longer be who he once was.