(Final Chapter of Volume I: The Ember Academy Arc)
The fire had finally gone out.
What remained of Ember City was a landscape of pale smoke and crimson dust — the scent of burnt incense, the aftertaste of battle.From the highest terrace of the academy, Yuj watched the sun crawl over the blackened rooftops.Below, healers carried buckets of light through the ruins, pouring magic into stone.The Fire Hunt banners still fluttered, charred but upright.
"Ember doesn't die easily,"said a voice behind him.
Alaric stood at the edge of the parapet, his red hair almost the same color as the morning sky.He leaned on his cane, eyes fixed on the city he'd guarded for decades.
"You did well," he added. "You survived the lesson.""Lesson?" Yuj asked, hollowly."That everything bright must learn to burn slow… or end too fast."
Yuj's fists clenched around the railing.The mark on his hand — once a brilliant flame — now pulsed with faint green veins.
"Kaen's still asleep," Alaric said, as if reading his thoughts."Frozen, but alive. Don't think of it as an end.""How else should I think of it?""As a pause. Fire needs air. You're not ready to breathe yet."
He placed a folded parchment in Yuj's hand — a travel pass marked with the seal of another academy.
"The Verdant Institute," Alaric said. "The Academy of Life.They owe me a favor, and you… owe them a headache."
Yuj exhaled a laugh that didn't reach his eyes.
"You're sending me away?""I'm giving you a road. The Ember halls are ashes for now. Let them cool."
He turned to go, then paused.
"Yuj," he said quietly. "When you see her again—""Yun?""Don't apologize for the fire. She was always meant to be near it."
Alaric left without another word.The sound of his cane faded down the corridor, like a heartbeat walking away.
✦
That night, Yuj descended to the central plaza one last time.The great lotus — the Flower of Ash — now lay dormant in the square. Its petals had turned to glass, each vein carrying a faint glow, as though remembering heat.
He knelt beside it and brushed his hand across the surface.
"Everything that burns becomes root," he whispered.
A spark of green answered from within the petal — brief, alive, hopeful.He smiled for the first time in days.
✦
Meanwhile, in the Headmaster's chamber, Varrin wrote by candlelight.Stacks of reports covered his desk — student files, damage assessments, death counts.He paused on one: Yuj of Yuvale Village.
"Born of fire. Marked by bloom," he murmured."Two gods. One host. How long can a vessel stay whole?"
The candle sputtered.A shadow behind him stirred — tall, slender, wearing the white mask.
"You've lost control," the masked one said."Control is overrated," Varrin replied. "What matters is result.""And the boy?""He'll bloom soon enough. Roots before fruit, remember?"
The masked figure inclined its head.When it vanished, the air smelled faintly of iron and flowers.
Varrin stared at the lotus sigil etched into his palm — seven petals, one now cracked.
"One down," he whispered. "Six to go."
✦
Dawn came quietly.The gates of Ember Academy opened for the first time since the Fire Hunt.
Yuj stood before them, cloak drawn, the green veins on his arm dim under the morning light.He turned once — toward the plaza, toward the frozen Kaen, toward the silent city that had both made and broken him.
"I'll come back," he said."When fire learns to grow."
He stepped onto the road leading north, where the horizon shimmered with the faint color of leaves.
The last ember faded.Somewhere in the ruins, a lotus petal cracked, and from that fracture, a single thread of light — neither red nor green — curled upward into the air, waiting for wind.
"End of Volume I — The Ember Academy Arc"(Next: Volume II — The Academy of Life Arc)