The winds screamed as Seris rode down from the Thunderback Range, her cloak a lash of black silk streaming behind her. Below, huddled in the cliffs like an old scar, lay the Ashborn Enclave, once a sanctuary of soulforgers, now a mere scattering of wary survivors.
She hadn't come back in fifteen years.
And if it was up to her, she wouldn't be here today.
The instant her boots landed on the etched obsidian stairs, she sensed it: the burden of memories. Ashen laughter. Erased faces by imperial mandate. Ancient ghosts exhaling behind frigid stone.
Seris spoke the old salutation: "By the ember that endures beyond the blaze."
The wall rippled.
A man emerged.
He was tall, clad in bone-embroidered robes, with smoldering coals where his eyes would be.
"Seris," he intoned, his voice like splintering wood. "You dare come back?"
"I bring with me a soulmark," she said, extending the closed crystal Kael had given her. "From the last legitimate heir."
The man's face flickered. He accepted the shard.
The instant he touched it, Essentia flashed weakly but unmistakably.
"Kael…" the man whispered, disbelief mixed with wonder.
Then he moved aside. "Come. The Council has to hear this."
The Ashborn Council Chamber was no longer imposing.
Once, it was a haven of lightwoven tapestries, soulflames dancing to the rhythm of memory chants. Now, there was bare stone and cold fire. The Ashborn, driven apart and pursued, had dwindled to three elders and a ring of wordless initiates.
Seris faced them, her face illuminated by a single brazier.
Elder Morvain, caretaker of the Ember Codex, leaned forward. "You talk about Kael Thorne… the boy who perished in the Flamefall?"
"No," Seris spoke. "I speak of the man who has come back from it."
Gasp.
Whispers.
She raised the shard higher. Essentia stored within throbbed, unearthing splintered images—Kael as a young child, tattooed with runes older than the Empire. Kael dying underneath falling fire. Kael renewed.
"He's awakened," Seris went on. "Not merely his spirit but the blood of the Ashborn. The Sovereign Flame awakens inside him."
Elder Ysera narrowed her eyes. "The Flame had been put out."
Seris met her gaze. "And then how do you account for the Pool's response? The runes? The Veins converging on his arrival? The boy is writing laws, not studying them."
Morvain whispered, "That is not cultivation. That is"
"Resonance," Seris concluded. "Precisely what we used to practice."
A heavy silence ensued.
Then Ysera spoke. "If this is true… then Kael is hope and heresy. The Empire will not permit him to live, nor will the Divine Concord."
That's why I need the Ashborn," Seris said. "We can't hide any longer. He remembers. And he'll bring others who remember, too."
Morvain raised a hand.
"If we rise, we risk a second purge."
"If you don't," Seris said, voice low, "you risk forgetting who you were forever.
Meanwhile, in the capital, Kael sat at the edge of a glistening platform far above the Ministry of Trials. His test would start at dawn.
The Proving of Veins.
Before the public eye.
Under scrying lenses.
And divine witnesses.
He had spent the previous night tracing runes in the air, only to rub them out seconds later. Too obvious. Too subtle. Too foreign.
He had to walk a knife's edge, demonstrating brilliance without revealing why he was brilliant.
He listened to footsteps behind him.
It was Darius.
His half-brother was impeccably clad in white and gold robes, hair held in silver thread, every bit the Empire's golden heir.
"You always enjoyed heights," Darius said, coming to stand beside him.
"They remind me of how much I might fall," Kael said.
Darius laughed. "And yet you continue climbing."
Kael didn't answer.
Darius's voice softened. "I saw what you did at the pool. Impressive. Hazardous."
"Everything that is worth doing is both."
Darius spun to him completely. "There's mention of inheritance now. Whispers about you. Some say you're the Empire's future."
"Let them whisper."
"You actually believe you can take the throne?"
Kael gazed up into the stars.
"I don't want the throne," he said. "I want what the Empire buried underneath it.
At sunrise, the plaza in front of the ministry filled with thousands. Nobles, merchants, scholars, and spies filled the tiered stone balconies. Above them, the Celestial Eye hovered, an ancient relic that recorded and broadcast every detail of the trial.
Kael entered the center circle.
Three Arbiters stood at the periphery, each embodying a Pillar of Power: Essentia, Bloodline, and Law.
The senior Arbiter spoke loudly.
"Kael Thorne, you are a contender before the Empire. Speak your resonance."
Kael took a step forward.
Silence dropped.
He held out his hand.
And called nothing.
Gasps resonated.
The Arbiters frowned.
One of them whispered, "Was it a fluke after all?"
Kael shut his eyes.
This was the risk.
The truth wasn't in power.
It was in pattern.
He drew a deep breath. Swept his finger through the air.
A line of golden writing appeared and then branched off into two.
Then four.
Then sixteen.
They danced in harmonic sequence, folding and unfolding, creating a lattice of whirling axioms. Not raw power, but the language of it, the grammar of the world itself.
The Arbiters stood stock-still.
The Celestial Eye glowed brighter.
From the audience, a scholar screamed, "He's not tracing existing runes! He's composing new ones!"
Kael's eyes opened.
"Essentia is not a gift," he stated. "It's a conversation."
The runes whirled into a pillar.
Then exploded into a tempest of blinding light.
The Veinstone beneath his feet was aglow with not one direction, but three. An impossibility. Only gods were claimed to resonate to more than one truth.
One Arbiter went to his knees.
The onlookers cried out.
But Kael was not smiling.
Because he could see it now floating just beyond the perimeter of the Circle.
A face in the crowd.
Ancient. Wrapped in bone-tinged black.
Watching him with blazing eyes.
Ashborn.
That night, Kael stood alone on the ministry's balcony.
He could feel it.
The world shifted beneath him.
His name spread through the Empire like wildfire. Children would chant it. Scribes would etch it. Enemies would curse it.
But it meant nothing without Seris.
He turned to the stars.
Come back.
Come back and tell me we're not alone.
Far beyond the capital, in the Enclave, Seris stood before the Ashborn pyre.
She bore a torch ablaze with soulflame.
The council stood behind her. Morvain had voted affirmative. Ysera had abstained.
The final vote had been cast by the silent initiate, now moving forward to put a hand upon her shoulder.
A young woman.
Eyes that glowed like coals.
"Light it," she whispered.
Seris brought flame to wood.
The pyre blazed to life.
The Flame was recalled.
And the Ashborn stirred.