---
The desert doesn't whisper.
It screams,
if you listen long enough.
At the edge of the Scorched Expanse, beyond the reach of maps and memory, stood the shrine of the Bone Oracle — a place the elders warned never to approach unless you had already made peace with death.
Siyara had not.
But her memories had grown too sharp, her visions too loud.
She could no longer tell where dream ended and nightmare began.
And so she came.
---
The Oracle sat beneath a lattice of bones — ribs of desert beasts woven into an open dome. Her skin was like paper soaked in salt, and her eyes were covered with black ash.
> "You carry the echo," the Oracle rasped before Siyara could speak.
> "Of what?"
> "Of a vow undone."
> "Then tell me what I was."
The Oracle raised one hand, crooked like a dying branch, and touched Siyara's brow.
---
Suddenly, Siyara was not in her body.
She was walking through a palace of mirrors, wearing red flame-silk, her hands wrapped in gold thorns. Trumpets cried, banners burned, and twelve kings bowed as she entered the throne room.
And waiting at the altar stood Kaelren, crowned in onyx, holding the black blade with both hands.
> "By the Twelve Suns..."
"...until the stars burn out, or my blood does first."
A shiver ran through her. The memory shifted.
Now Kaelren stood over her body — her real one — blade dripping, crown shattered.
> "Forgive me," he whispered. "They've cursed me to forget."
Then darkness.
--
Siyara collapsed to her knees, gasping.
> "Why did he kill me?" she demanded.
The Oracle did not answer at first.
Then:
> "He didn't. Not fully."
> "What does that mean?"
> "You did not die, child. Not truly. You were bound. Sealed. Burned into memory to become the Flame of Vengeance."
> "And him?"
> "He was made to forget. Each lifetime, the blade calls him. Each lifetime, you remember. But only one lifetime can break the cycle."
> "This one?"
The Oracle said nothing.
But the sky cracked above them.
A red streak bled across the horizon — the Heir's Eclipse had begun.
---
Back in the capital, Rhaelor gripped his head as the pain returned.
Visions of a throne room. A wedding. Her scream.
And the blade in his hand — burning.
He staggered to his feet.
> "I need to find her," he breathed.
"Before I become what I was."
---
Far beneath the desert, the chained entity stirred again.
> "One remembers. One forgets."
> "Let the blood repeat."
---
End of Chapter 8
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