The air in the Southern Marches had changed.
Not just colder—but heavier. Like the land was holding its breath, waiting for something to crack.
Even the animals had gone quiet.
Auren stood at the edge of the scorched hollow where the last flare was seen. Smoke still curled from the blackened ground. Whatever had happened here, it wasn't natural.
Not even Void-touched left this kind of mark.
"They say the flame was blue," said Lys, stepping beside him. "It didn't burn… it hummed."
Auren said nothing, but his heart was already racing.
He'd felt something during the night. In his sleep, his body had burned from the inside out. His bones hummed with strange energy. And when he woke, the scar on his arm—the one he never remembered getting—was glowing faintly under his skin.
Darien and Caelen arrived soon after with soldiers.
"Auren," Darien said curtly. "You'll scout ahead. A minor threat was spotted along the ridge. Test yourself. Prove your value."
It wasn't a request.
It was a test.
The ridge was quiet—until it wasn't.
Shadows moved in the fog. Not beasts. Not men.
Things.
Twisted shapes wrapped in shardlight, like broken masks stitched with glowing threads.
One lunged.
Auren barely dodged, rolling behind a jagged rock. His heart pounded, and his mind screamed to run.
But then—the sound came.
A whisper. A low note, like the string of a cello struck deep inside his chest.
His vision blurred. His hand glowed.
Blue.
The same color the scouts had seen.
Without thinking, he raised his hand—and a wave of cold light burst from his palm, striking the creature dead in the center. It froze, solid like glass, then shattered.
Silence.
Another came.
Auren turned—and this time, the light answered before he called it.
The cold wasn't fear anymore.
It was him.
Later, back at camp, he didn't speak.
But the soldiers had seen.
Darien watched him closely, a frown tugging at his mouth. Caelen said nothing, but for the first time, his eyes weren't filled with scorn.
That night, Auren sat alone, staring at the flame dancing in his hand.
It wasn't fire.
It was colder than ice. Yet it gave off light—light that twisted like a forgotten melody.
Lys approached, arms crossed. "They're scared of you now."
"They should be," Auren said softly.
She raised a brow. "You're not scared of yourself?"
He looked at the flame again. "I was."
He closed his hand. The light vanished.
"But I think I finally understand what I am."
Far to the east, in a hidden chamber deep beneath the capital, the fourth Crown Watcher whispered to a stone mirror:
"It has begun."
And somewhere beneath the Southern Marches, the cold flame flickered again—
—burning in the heart of something older than the Crown itself.