Kael sat cross-legged before the cracked stone tablet. The chamber was silent, save for the slow drip of water echoing from somewhere above. The vial of glowing ash rested before him, its pulsing light barely illuminating the etched runes around the walls.
The blind herbalist stood behind him like a wraith of old wisdom.
"Breathe in," she said, "not with your lungs—but with your scars. Let the flame touch the parts of you that still bleed."
Kael didn't understand—but he tried. He closed his eyes, and instead of searching for power, he searched for memory.
Pain answered.
He remembered the first beating he took as a child, fists pounding into his ribs because he couldn't channel qi.
He remembered the cold eyes of elders as they declared him "defective."
He remembered her—the girl he once smiled for—walking away without looking back, as the sect laughed.
And in those memories, he found something strange. Not weakness. Not sorrow.
But fuel.
The vial of ash flared to life.
The flame didn't rise—it coiled. Like it recognized him. As if it had been waiting.
Suddenly, Kael's back arched, and heat surged through his limbs—not as energy, not as qi, but as memory. The pain he had carried, the hatred, the isolation—they weren't weights anymore.
They were kindling.
The herbalist's voice was a whisper beside his ear. "The Flame does not choose the strong. It chooses the broken. Because only they have space for it to grow."
Kael's eyes snapped open.
They burned.
Not with fire, but with a red glow that shimmered in the stone's reflection. For the first time in his life, something moved inside him.
Not a spirit root. Not a bloodline.
But a spark.
A presence. Ancient. Watching.
And then—a voice, not hers, and not his.
"Warden… reborn."
Kael gasped. The flame inside him dimmed, settling like a sleeping beast. The glow faded. Silence returned.
He looked up at the herbalist.
"What was that?"
She turned, robes brushing the dust of centuries. "The Fire remembers. And now… so will you."