The Song of Embers
The days that followed Calvenreach's liberation were not easy.
Though the Wyrm Beneath had been vanquished, its whispers still curled in corners of the earth. The Hollowed left behind more than ashes—they left echoes: grief, doubt, fractured memories.
Auriel stood on a half-collapsed balcony overlooking the ruined city. Her once-white robe was smudged with soot and blood, her eyes shadowed with the burden of fire.
Vaelora joined her, silent.
"I thought we ended it," Auriel murmured. "But I still feel it… that thing, slithering behind the veil."
The white wolf's voice entered her mind like a wind brushing coals.
"Destruction leaves roots. What is buried may rise again—unless replaced."
Behind them, Serene taught the children who had survived. She had built a quiet space from rubble, using broken stones to form circles where they sat and listened. Stories were her balm now, and the light of Lunethis shone through her hands when she sang.
Lira, the Grove's heir, spent her days walking the charred streets, coaxing wildflowers from between stones. Even among ruin, green things listened to her.
Hope returned in pieces.
But prophecy was not finished.
In the sacred ruins of Vel Moraen, Vaelora led them to a sealed vault—a door carved in star-metal, untouched for millennia.
Thorne and Elian joined them again, for what lay within was once forbidden even to the Wolfguard.
Vaelora whispered as the door opened.
"The Thirteenth Flame was never meant to burn."
Inside, the vault held a single torch. It glowed faintly, not with heat, but with memory. Blue-white flame flickered—cold and beautiful.
Serene stepped forward. "It sings."
Indeed, it did. A music hummed in the chamber—a harmony that filled the heart but left a hollow in its wake.
"This," Elian said softly, "is the Flame of Mourning. It can burn away grief… or the world with it."
Auriel stared at it. "Then why bring us here?"
Vaelora turned to them both. "Because the Wyrm Beneath is not gone. Only sleeping. If it wakes, if all else fails… this flame is your last hope. It will erase not only the beast—but all memory of it."
Serene paled. "Even us?"
"All."
That night, Lira dreamed of a forest older than time. In her dream, roots whispered names long lost—Aelenthra, the Grove Queen. Vyren, the Stone-Tamer. Vaelwyn, the First Flamebearer.
She stood before a tree with leaves of starlight. A voice like wind in petals spoke:
"You are the last seed. Shall you root, or shall you fall?"
When she woke, her hands glowed green and gold. She no longer needed to ask questions.
She remembered.
"I am not just Lira," she told the sisters. "I am the last sprout of the Eternal Grove. And I have seen where the Wyrm burrows now."
She pointed south—beyond the known realms, to the Cradle of Dust, where ancient cities were buried beneath oceans of sand.
"The true heart of the Wyrm lies in the Forgotten Deep."
The journey south was perilous.
Storms of glass swept the deserts. Sandscorpions the size of oxen roamed under blood moons. The heat could peel reason from the mind.
But Lira walked untouched, her presence calming beasts and bending thorns away.
Auriel's flames now shimmered blue—refined, focused. Serene's mirror no longer showed only truth, but also possible futures, bending light to glimpse paths yet taken.
And Vaelora… changed.
She grew more silent, her coat gleaming with threads of silver. Her gaze turned ever toward the horizon, as though counting stars the others could not see.
When they reached the Forgotten Deep, they found it pulsing.
The earth itself throbbed like a heartbeat.
Below the sand lay a sleeping giant: the Core-Wyrm, the original source. The beast in Calvenreach was only a shard.
"We're too late," Auriel said.
"No," Serene replied. "We're exactly in time."
To awaken the Core-Wyrm was to end the world.
Unless they could seal it.
But no ordinary seal would suffice. Only a weave of fire, memory, root, and reflection could hold back such a being.
"We must bind it with what it cannot digest," Vaelora explained. "Love. Grief. Hope. The soul."
The ritual required sacrifice. Not of blood—but of memory.
Each would have to give up the moment most precious to them, and let it become part of the seal.
Auriel stepped forward first.
"I give my mother's last lullaby—the one she sang before the fire took her."
Serene placed her hand on the sand.
"I give the first time I saw the stars reflected in the lake with Auriel beside me."
Lira, tears in her eyes, touched the ground.
"I give the moment I remembered who I truly was."
Vaelora placed her paw upon the circle.
"I give… my name."
They chanted.
The Wyrm stirred.
The desert howled.
A cage of light bloomed—a prison woven from song, sorrow, and soul.
The Core-Wyrm roared and vanished beneath ten thousand roots that wrapped it tight.
And silence fell.
When the dust settled, Vaelora stood apart.
Her coat no longer gleamed. Her eyes dimmed, no longer sky-blue but fading to frost-white.
"A part of me remains below," she said quietly.
"You gave your name," Auriel whispered, tears falling freely. "Can you stay?"
Vaelora shook her head. "I am guardian no more. I was flame, and the flame has dimmed."
Serene knelt before her. "Then let us carry you."
"You will. You already do."
The great wolf stepped forward and pressed her brow to Lira's.
"To you I pass what remains of the Grove."
Then to the sisters.
"To you, I pass the howl—the fire and the light."
She turned to the stars.
And faded.
They buried Vaelora at the edge of the Cradle, where roots now grew in once-dead sand.
Lira planted a tree of silver leaves over her grave.
Years passed.
The sisters became legend—not for war, but for what they restored.
Cities once fractured began to heal. Wolves returned to forgotten forests. Songs were sung of the White Flame and the Mirror of Moons, and the Child of the Grove who tamed the Wyrm's breath.
But only they remembered her scent. Her howl.
Her love.
Epilogue: The Howl in the Stars
On the longest night of winter, when stars gather thickest, a howl echoes across the sky.
Children hear it and smile.
Mothers hush them with tales of a great white wolf, and two sisters in flowing robes, and a girl who grew a forest from ash.
They say the wolf still watches.
They say the bond never truly breaks.
And if you stand very still, on frost-laced grass under a violet moon—
You might just feel her beside you.
Warm.
Watching.
Waiting.
Always.