The wind shifted.Torian felt it before he saw it—a change in pressure, a sudden absence of sound. It wasn't just quiet.
The forest had gone still in a way that made even Skarn's paws fall silent. No birds. No insects. No
rustling leaves. Only the soft scrape of wind slipping through scorched branches.
Then they crested the ridge.
The forest ended in a jagged line, and below stretched a city made of ruin and memory. Stone
towers collapsed upon themselves, their broken edges sharp against the ash-covered landscape.
Streets lay in crooked spiderwebs across the basin floor. Statues half-swallowed by black soot
leaned toward the sky like twisted ghosts. And at the very center—visible even from this height—a
massive crater where the great temple once stood yawned like a scar in the earth.
Torian and Skarn stood there for a long time, unmoving.
"What happened here…" Torian breathed.
Skarn let out a low, reverberating growl—not threat, not fear. Mourning.
They descended in silence.
The path to the city was steep, winding along broken walls and brittle trees. The air grew hotter with
each step, though the sun was dim above. Smoke drifted in lazy, gray spirals from cracks in the
stone. The air smelled of charcoal and something older—something burnt beyond recognition.
By the time they reached the gates, Torian's chest was tight with unease.
The entrance stood shattered. Once tall enough to let caravans and soldiers pass side by side, now
it was a tangle of collapsed columns and fused stone. One door still remained, barely—a melted
husk curled back from its hinges, blackened and cracked.
Torian ran a hand along the scorched surface. "It wasn't raiders. Or time. This city burned from the
inside."
Skarn didn't respond. His golden eyes swept the rubble ahead as they stepped through.
Inside, the city was worse.Every street bore signs of panic. Carriages frozen mid-flight. Skeletons slumped against walls,
charred bones fused to blackened armor. Melted weapons still lay in the streets. Buildings leaned
inward as if recoiling from a central blast that had long since faded but left echoes etched in glass
and stone.
Torian knelt beside a corpse.
Its fingers clutched a sword handle melted to its palm. The blade had fused with the cobblestones.
The breastplate bore a spiral emblem. The same spiral carved into his own sword hilt.
He looked up.
The same spiral had been painted—now mostly scorched—on banners overhead. Faded murals
depicted flame-bearers standing triumphant, wielding fire in battle, holding back monsters, lifting
the poor.
But the colors had been scorched away.
All that remained were black silhouettes against walls of ash.
"They were like me," Torian said. "Flame-bearers."
Skarn stopped near one of the murals, sniffed the air, then let out a deep huff.
Torian continued down the road, his boots crunching over old glass. The closer they got to the
center, the hotter it became. Not just temperature—but memory. The ember in his chest had begun
to throb faintly, like a warning heartbeat. It wasn't guiding him.
It was bracing.
⸻
They found the archive beneath what was left of the Hall of Memory.
The entrance had caved in centuries ago, but Skarn found a collapsed vent beneath a fallen statue.
Torian squeezed through the narrow tunnel first, using his sword to clear debris. When he emerged
into the chamber beyond, he gasped.It had survived.
Barely.
The archive room was round, the walls lined with broken shelves and burned scrolls. Ember-vein
markings pulsed faintly along the floor—old enchantments, flickering weakly with failing power.
At the room's center sat a pedestal.
On it, a sealed metal tube—intact.
Torian stepped forward carefully, brushing soot from the casing. His fingers found a latch, and with
a hiss of escaping air, the seal broke.
Inside were scrolls.
Dozens—burned at the edges, but legible.
He unrolled the first.
"Day 17. The new flame-bearers arrived. Five this season. All young. One girl from the
north carries a spark already. They've begun training under the First Ember."
Another scroll:
"Day 211. Two flame-bearers were expelled. They refused to follow discipline—argued
that the ember should be wielded freely. Dangerous thought. We debated casting them
from the city. The council disagreed. We will watch them."
Then:
"Day 506. The south quarter has been evacuated. The experiment was… unstable. The
Third Ember refuses to relinquish the core. She claims it speaks to her directly. The
others are frightened. We can't keep this secret much longer."
Scroll after scroll chronicled the same pattern—hope, progress, rebellion, fracture.
And finally:"Final Entry. I write this from the archive. The fire has consumed the High Circle. The
First and Fifth have turned on each other. The core pulses like a living thing now. We
made the ember a source of power instead of purpose. Now it remembers us only as
ash. If anyone finds this, know this: we were warned. The ember is not a crown. It is a
question. And we failed to answer it."
Torian lowered the scroll, hands shaking.
Skarn stood behind him, unmoving.
"They tried to control it," Torian whispered. "They tried to own it."
He looked up at the glowing veins lining the chamber.
"And it burned them for their arrogance."
He stood slowly, eyes still on the pedestal.
The ember in his chest burned a little brighter.
Not angry.
Not sad.
Just… aware.
⸻
They climbed to the crater at midday.
The path wound up a spiral of shattered marble steps that had once led to the temple
plaza. Now, they circled the edge of a gaping wound in the city's heart.
The crater was enormous—over a hundred feet wide, its walls fused glass and black
rock. Heat rose in shimmering waves from the center, where the ground still glowed
faintly orange. Nothing grew here. Not even moss.Torian stepped to the edge and looked down.
The ember in his chest surged.
He stumbled.
Skarn leapt forward, catching him by the cloak with his teeth and pulling him back. He
let out a warning growl and stood between Torian and the crater's lip, wings flared.
"It's okay," Torian said, hands raised.
But it wasn't.
He had felt it—just for a moment.
The fire wanted to leap.
Not at the crater. At him.
His thoughts. His doubts. His curiosity.
He backed away, heart racing.
"They didn't destroy the city by accident," he said. "They were fighting over it. Over the flame. And
it consumed them all."
Skarn grunted and began pacing.
Torian sat down on a piece of broken stone, sweat pouring from his brow.
"What if that's what it always does?" he asked quietly. "What if this is all it knows? Destruction."
The flame didn't answer.
Not with words.
But a memory surfaced—not his own. One from the ember.A vision of a man, kneeling in the center of the crater, screaming as fire poured from his mouth, his
eyes, his hands—turning the temple to glass, the sky to smoke, his body to ash.
Torian recoiled.
Skarn pressed his massive body against him, grounding him.
"I'm not him," Torian whispered. "I won't be him."
But the ember throbbed with uncertainty.
⸻
They left the city that night, retracing their steps through broken walls and abandoned courtyards.
As they crossed beneath the shattered arch of the gate, Torian turned back one last time.
The city stood silent in the moonlight.
No monsters.
No armies.
Just the remnants of people who had been given power and had failed to be worthy of it.
Torian touched the hilt of his sword.
The spiral glowed faintly.
He didn't speak.
There were no promises left to make.
Only a fire waiting to see what kind of man he would become.