They still call me commander, though the word feels like an echo of a man long dead.
Two years since the fall, and the scars still burn when the wind shifts. I've rebuilt what I can — soldiers, cities, a fragile peace held together by the memory of fear. But every night, when I close my eyes, I see her. The way she looked before the world caught fire. The way she whispered my name as the bond broke.
Nyra.
The name alone can stop my breath. I don't speak it aloud anymore. I don't dare. Because sometimes, when I do, the air answers back.
I stand on the battlements of the Blackspire keep, watching the dawn crawl up the horizon. The city below me hums with unease — traders moving under the watch of soldiers, whispers of another flare to the north. Another ruin turned to ash.
I already know what it means.
The Flame is stirring again.
A knock at the door breaks the silence. "Enter."
A young lieutenant steps in, eyes sharp, voice uncertain. "Another settlement lost, my lord. The scouts say it burned from within — no survivors."
I nod, though my chest tightens. "And the mark?"
He hesitates. "Left behind, sir. Carved into stone."
The same sigil. Always the same. The mark of the Bloodbound.
When the boy leaves, I let the mask fall. My hands shake. The pain starts low, coiling around my ribs, rising up through my throat. The bond may have been broken, but the remnants of it never left me. It sleeps under my skin like a fever that never breaks.
Sometimes, I feel her pulse through it — faint, defiant, alive.
I've spent two years trying to sever it. I've drowned it in steel, in battle, in silence. But it always returns. And now, as the sun bleeds across the horizon, I feel it again — sharp and sudden.
A heartbeat. Not mine. Hers.
The air hums. The room darkens. Shadows stretch along the walls like they're reaching for me. I grab the edge of the table, grit my teeth, and breathe through the pain.
"Nyra," I whisper.
And in that instant, the world answers.
A single whisper curls through the air, soft as a kiss, cruel as memory:"Find me."
The pain vanishes. The bond hums like fire beneath my skin. And I know, with bone-deep certainty, that she's alive.
But the Flame that burns through her now…isn't the one I knew.