The wind turned hollow in the highlands.
It carried no scent. No ash. No warmth. Just the dry echo of something ancient and emptied — a land that once held fire, but had long since forgotten it.
Torian stood atop Skarn's back as they passed between two towering stone arches carved by time and wind. The bones of long-dead Spiral watchtowers jutted out like broken fingers along the ridgeline. Snow clung to nothing. It fell sideways. Melted at the edge of his cloak. Then vanished.
They had been climbing for two days.
Trel'Shavon — the name carved beneath the sixth seal in the drowned city — wasn't on any map. But the Spiral in Torian's chest had begun to guide him again, if weakly. Not by firelight, but by pressure. Pull. A distant ache that throbbed in his chest every time they turned east.
Now, at last, it had gone still.
And everything else had gone quiet.
⸻
The Mourning Highlands stretched before them — a wide, sunless plateau of gray stone, ice-cracked and colorless. No trees. No birds. Only low hills and remnants of structures long buried in frost.
Torian dropped from Skarn's back and stepped forward.
His Spiral didn't glow. It hummed — like a dying heartbeat trying to remember its rhythm.
He reached for the glider at his side, checked the straps out of habit, and then let it fall back against his shoulder.
"Stay close," he said.
Skarn nodded once, his paw sinking a few inches into brittle ground. Even his breath steamed thinner than usual. It didn't rise. It drifted down.
They were in a place where fire had no memory.
⸻
They moved slowly, boots cracking old frost, paws crushing wind-bleached bone.
It was strange — nothing moved, but signs of movement were everywhere. Stone ruins, collapsed walls, what might have been training rings now filled with snow. Carved Spiral symbols half-erased by time.
Torian touched one.
It didn't react.
The Spiral in his chest gave no answer.
For a moment, it felt like he was alone again — like the fire that had saved him in the dark, lit his body in bursts of heat and defiance, had simply… gone.
"I don't like it here," he muttered.
Skarn let out a quiet growl.
Then froze.
Ears forward.
Torian followed his gaze — down a slope of broken shale to where an ancient courtyard opened below, cradled by stone pillars twisted into near-human shapes.
And in the center…
A figure knelt.
⸻
At first, Torian thought it was a statue.
Then it moved.
Barely — a shifting of shoulders under a heavy fur cloak, a breath visible only because the snow bent around it.
Torian stepped forward carefully.
The Spiral in his chest trembled again, a flicker of response.
"Are you…" he called out, voice tight, "…one of them?"
The figure didn't answer.
He walked closer. Skarn followed, tail low, wings slightly raised.
The kneeling shape was old. Not frail — but worn. Scarred. They wore no armor. Only a mantle of spiral-woven cloth, frayed and weather-faded, over thick robes. Their back remained to Torian, even as he came within ten feet.
Then, quietly:
"You carry the flame."
Torian swallowed.
"Yes."
A long silence.
Then:
"And now you seek what the flame forgot."
The figure stood.
Slowly.
He turned.
And Torian saw his face.
Weathered. Pale. Tattooed across one cheek with a faded spiral crest — so old it had cracked. His eyes were white, not from blindness, but from grief. Grief held so long it had burned through color.
Torian stepped back.
"You were one of them."
The man nodded.
"I am Rovas. Once sixth in the Circle of Flame. Now…" he gestured to the barren land, "…I keep what's left of the promise we failed to hold."
Torian's Spiral pulsed, just once, almost as if in recognition.
"You sealed Kaelgor," he said.
Rovas closed his eyes.
"We sealed a brother. A friend who carried too much. A flame that bent the edge of its own will. We thought we could hold him together."
Torian clenched his fists. "You didn't."
"No," Rovas said. "We didn't."
⸻
They sat in silence for a long time, Rovas lowering himself again to kneel in the frozen courtyard, Torian beside him. Skarn stood just behind, his presence steady but still.
Wind moved around them like a slow breath.
Torian finally spoke.
"I saw the memory," he said. "The moment it broke."
Rovas did not move.
"One of you faltered. A seventh."
This time, Rovas looked at him sharply.
"No," he said. "He wasn't the seventh. He was the first."
Torian blinked.
"What?"
Rovas looked toward the sky.
"There was no seventh. Only six. Six willing. But one… he was never meant to bear a Spiral. He forced it. Stole it. He feared what Kaelgor would become. Feared what we all would. And when the seal required trust, he offered control instead."
Torian's stomach turned.
"You don't know his name?"
"I do," Rovas said. "But names don't stop fire. Only truth does."
He turned now, fully, and laid a hand on Torian's shoulder.
"I see the flame in you, child. I see the path. But you won't stop him alone. The other bearers—the survivors—they went into hiding when the seal broke. Into realms where fire is forbidden, and the Spiral doesn't speak."
Torian's breath caught.
"Then I'll find them."
Rovas smiled, faint and sad.
"Find them. Learn why they stayed silent. Learn what broke Kaelgor, and what still binds him. If you don't…"
He gestured again to the land around them.
"…this fate won't be his alone."
⸻
He gave Torian a map — not ink on paper, but a memory-etched disc of Spiral-forged metal. When Torian touched it, it glowed, revealing two locations.
One in the east. A ruined cliff-city locked in wind.
One to the far south. A chasm said to swallow light.
Torian stood and bowed his head.
"Thank you."
But as he turned to leave, Rovas said one last thing:
"Torian."
He stopped.
"The flame doesn't make you strong. It reveals what you are.
Don't let it show you nothing."
⸻
Torian climbed back onto Skarn's back as the wind picked up again.
They turned eastward — toward the next seal-bearer, and whatever remnants of truth still survived in the forgotten heights.
Above them, the sky began to snow.
But the Spiral in his chest had found its rhythm again.
And it burned.
The wind began before they ever saw the city.
Not a breeze. Not the broken gusts of the highlands. This was something deeper — constant, hollow, and shaped like thought. It screamed without sound, rattled without form. As Skarn soared lower, Torian felt it roll over his skin like pressure without weight.
They had followed the etched disc Rovas gave them for three days. East. Always east. Past crumbled watchfires, abandoned waystones, and a ravine so steep it caught starlight and bent it upward.
And now, finally, they reached the cliff-city of old.
Velkareth.
The city above silence.
The place wind never stopped.
⸻
It had been carved into the side of a massive mountain wall, long ago — a hanging city made from Spiral stone, bridges woven like threads of fire-glass, terraces shaped like flame-tongues wrapping outward. It was beautiful once.
Now, it was broken.
The glass bridges were shattered. Towers bent like spears of bone. Spiral wards carved into the rock had fractured, and long streaks of ash-black wind trailed from them like bleeding ink. The city clung to the mountain, suspended above a thousand-foot drop — and the wind howled through its hollow bones.
Skarn flew low, circling once.
Torian gripped his fur tightly. The Spiral in his chest flared briefly — a warning, not of danger… but of grief.
The one who lives here doesn't want to be found.
Skarn banked toward a large balcony cracked open by time, where a once-regal archway stood like the open jaw of some slumbering god. He landed hard, claws scraping the edge.
Torian leapt off and faced the city.
"If they're still alive," he said, "we'll find them."
Skarn snorted and crouched low.
Then, together, they stepped inside.
⸻
The city was hollow.
Rooms without voices. Plazas without breath. Every corridor they passed through bore signs of life that had once burned hot — training circles, Spiral relics, abandoned armor pieces — now left under layers of wind-swept dust. Torian ran a hand across a fallen brazier and lifted a cold Spiral stone from within.
Nothing.
Not even a flicker.
It was as if this place had given up on fire entirely.
But that didn't mean no one was here.
Torian felt it. A pressure, like a presence just behind the stone. Watching. Measuring. Waiting for him to speak — or to leave.
They climbed upward through broken stairs and bent halls. The higher they went, the stronger the wind grew. It wasn't random. It flowed up — as if trying to drag the entire mountain into the sky.
Then they reached the final level.
The sky opened above them.
A platform stretched out over the cliff's edge, cracked and glowing faintly beneath the wind. Spiral runes pulsed along the floor — intact.
Someone had been maintaining them.
And in the center of that circle…
Stood a figure.
Not cloaked.
Not armored.
A woman.
Tall. Still. Hands clasped behind her back. Her hair was silver-black, bound in long cords. Her cloak, spiral-woven, danced weightlessly around her even in the still center of the storm. Her Spiral mark burned across both palms — not like Torian's single brand, but split.
A twin Spiral-bearer.
She didn't turn.
"You carry it," she said, voice like iron over stone.
Torian stepped forward, carefully.
"You were one of them."
She nodded once.
"Fifth in the Circle. I am Vesryn. The one who remembered when the others chose to forget."
Torian let out a slow breath.
"I need to know how to stop him."
At that, she finally turned — and her eyes burned not with flame, but with windlight. Blue, sharp, and carved with exhaustion.
"You don't stop wind," she said.
"You break against it. Or you learn to ride it."
And then she raised her hand—
And the wind obeyed.
The wind struck like a blade.
It didn't knock Torian back—it lifted him, flung him sideways, spun him across the platform until his glider clattered to the stone. He barely rolled with the landing, breath torn from his lungs as he slammed against a cracked pillar. Sparks flared across his vision. His Spiral burned hot for a moment… then dimmed.
Across the platform, Vesryn stood unmoved.
Her hair and cloak whipped in spiraling gusts that circled her like wolves on an invisible chain. Her feet never left the ground. Her hands never rose above her waist.
The wind moved for her.
Torian coughed and pushed himself to his knees. "I didn't come here to fight."
"No," Vesryn said, her voice cutting through the storm. "You came to beg."
The Spiral in Torian's chest pulsed.
"Beg for what?"
"For a path. A solution. A shortcut." Her eyes narrowed, wind rising again. "You lit a match in a drowning world. And now you seek the hands that built the fire, hoping we'll put it out."
"I want to stop him!" Torian shouted.
Vesryn's Spiral symbols flared on her palms. The wind slammed downward in a spiral arc, carving shallow runes into the stone beneath Torian's feet.
"Then show me," she said. "Show me how you hold the Spiral."
⸻
Torian clenched his jaw.
He didn't draw the glider.
He didn't reach for fire.
Instead, he closed his eyes—and focused.
The Spiral had never been a weapon to him. Not like it had been for those before. It was something alive, inside him. It beat like a heart, pulsed like breath. He didn't command it. He asked it to walk beside him.
And now, standing at the eye of a storm, he asked it again.
Not to burn.
Not to strike.
Just to stand.
The wind screamed again. It lifted rocks from the edges of the platform. Runes flared. Air turned like knives.
Torian stood.
Not unmoved.
But unbroken.
His Spiral glowed—not as a beacon, but as balance.
Vesryn's expression changed.
The wind stopped.
⸻
Silence fell across the mountain.
Not peace—just the absence of fury.
She lowered her arms.
"There it is," she said.
Torian exhaled.
Skarn, who had been crouched at the entrance to the platform, tense and growling, finally stood and stepped forward.
Vesryn turned away, walking to the edge of the cliff.
"The Spiral isn't about flame," she said. "It's not about power. It's about will. Fire without will devours. With too much will, it becomes… Kaelgor."
Torian stepped closer.
"You knew him well."
"I loved him."
She said it simply. Not as a confession. As a fact.
"He wasn't meant to be what he became. None of us were. The Spiral chose us for what we could give—not what we could take. But Kaelgor… he wanted to protect too much. Carry too much. Burn instead of others. He became fire. But forgot he was still human."
Torian looked down at his hands.
His fingertips still flickered from the storm. His Spiral's glow was faint now, soft and steady.
"I need to know how you sealed him."
Vesryn closed her eyes.
"We didn't."
She turned and faced him again.
"We sealed his heart. Not his body. Not his power. That's why he rose again. Because the part of him we saved was not strong enough to hold the rest."
Torian nodded. "So… you'll help me?"
"I'll do more than that," she said. "I'll show you the place where Kaelgor fell for the first time."
Torian's eyes widened. "You know where it is?"
"Yes. But it's not on this mountain. It's not even in this sky."
She walked to the center of the platform, knelt, and pressed her palms to the Spiral runes carved into the stone.
They flared bright blue.
The storm winds twisted inward. Not violently—deliberately. Controlled.
The platform began to descend—not down the cliffside, but into the wind itself.
A secret chamber, long buried in air, opened below.
The storm had been guarding it all along.
⸻
As they passed down into the hollow, Vesryn looked back once more.
"I'll take you to the place where we broke him," she said.
"And maybe… if you're strong enough…"
"…you'll learn how not to become him."
The descent was not measured in steps or floors.
There were no walls. No stone. No torches.
Only wind—spiraling in silence, held in perfect tension. Vesryn moved without hesitation through the vortex, her cloak flowing as if submerged in water. Behind her, Torian followed, one hand resting against the glider at his back, the other lightly touching the soft glow at his chest.
Skarn dropped in beside them, wings half-extended. The wind didn't fight him. It moved aside, like it recognized him.
A beast not of Spiral.
But of something deeper.
The silence grew.
Until the winds broke against a threshold.
Vesryn stopped.
Before them, suspended in the hollow heart of the mountain, stood a platform of translucent stone—hanging in nothing, cradled by threads of air. Spirals carved from crystal curved overhead like ribs. In the center stood six pedestals, each marked by a different glyph.
All of them burned faintly.
All but one.
The pedestal of Kaelgor.
Shattered.
Still glowing green.
⸻
Torian stepped onto the platform.
His Spiral flared the moment his boot hit the stone. Not in warning—in recognition. Like a bell struck in an old cathedral. His breath caught. The glider on his back twitched slightly, reacting to the Spiral surge.
"This is it," Vesryn said softly. "The place where he let us try."
Torian approached the pedestals. The marks were familiar—each the symbol of the original Spiral-bearers. The others glowed with memory: flickers of faces, broken voices, warmth trapped in fragments of fire.
But Kaelgor's plinth…
It bled green light.
Not like fire.
Like a wound.
Skarn growled low, hackles rising.
"He fell here?" Torian asked.
Vesryn nodded.
"He surrendered here. Offered his Spiral to be sealed—not extinguished. But in that moment… one of us hesitated."
Torian stepped closer.
"I thought there were only six."
"There were," she said. "But Kaelgor… he burned so brightly, we needed a seventh anchor—a forgepoint to stabilize the ritual. We built it into the chamber itself."
She pointed upward—at the spiral ribs.
"They weren't meant to hold wind. They were meant to hold him."
Torian looked around the chamber. It wasn't a prison. It was a cradle. A sacred place designed not to punish… but to protect.
"And it wasn't enough."
"No," Vesryn said, voice quiet. "Because one of us didn't believe he could be saved."
She knelt and placed her palm on the edge of Kaelgor's broken pedestal.
Instantly, the green light surged.
A holographic flame erupted in the center of the circle—Kaelgor, not as he was now, but as he had been: standing tall, Spiral burning bright in his chest, eyes full of resolve.
Torian watched in silence.
The projection flickered.
Vesryn stood at his side. The others—Rovas, three more—surrounded him. They held hands over the pedestal, fire linking between them. Kaelgor knelt.
And then—the seventh point cracked.
Not physically. Emotionally.
A link broke.
A Spiral flared out of sync.
One of them hesitated.
The ritual collapsed.
Kaelgor screamed—not in pain, but in realization. He looked down at his hands, watched the Verdant flame erupt from his chest. Not because he called it.
Because nothing stopped it.
And when the others stepped back, he looked up—eyes still human—and whispered:
"It's too late now."
The memory shattered.
⸻
Torian fell to his knees.
His Spiral burned hard against his ribs, heat threading through his limbs, not painfully—but with weight. The truth of what had happened pressed into him like an oath.
Kaelgor didn't fall.
He was let go.
Vesryn turned away.
"We failed him," she said. "I thought… maybe the seal would hold. That love would be stronger than fear. But it wasn't."
Torian rose slowly.
"Can it be done again?"
Vesryn looked at him. Eyes full of windlight.
"No. Not the same way."
Torian clenched his fists.
"Then how do I stop him?"
Vesryn walked to a small alcove behind the central dais and retrieved a piece of Spiral-forged alloy—long, smooth, and marked with both Spiral and Verdant script.
She handed it to him.
"This was meant to be the tether point. A channel through which Kaelgor's will would return to us if the seal ever frayed. It failed… but it still echoes."
Torian held the rod in both hands. His Spiral pulsed against it—hot, confused, almost frightened.
"If you can find the others," Vesryn said, "if you can reforge the broken ritual—not to seal him, but to reach him—maybe…"
She didn't finish the sentence.
She didn't need to.
Maybe Kaelgor still existed somewhere inside that endless, floating Verdant god.
Maybe he didn't.
Either way—
Torian now held the first key.
⸻
The chamber began to hum. The wind shifted around them, curling inward. The Spiral ribs above them began to glow once more.
Vesryn looked up.
"You need to go."
Torian nodded. "Where?"
"There's a chasm far to the south. Older than the Spiral. No flame ever touched its walls. The next bearer lives there. Alone. Ashamed."
Torian turned to Skarn.
"We'll go."
Skarn stepped forward, silent as ever.
But his wings opened wide.
They flew upward—through the wind-forged spiral chamber, through the mountain's bones, through a column of memory and silence and song.
And as they rose, Vesryn whispered:
"Don't try to burn brighter than him…
Try to burn truer."