The Scorched Expanse stretched before them like the back of a dead god—endless, blistering, and unforgiving. Once a thriving empire of stone and song, it was now nothing but sand-choked ruins and the ghost-light of buried cities.
Kael adjusted the leather wrap across his mouth as a windstorm screamed past, carrying ash and whispers. Every step forward felt like a march into forgotten sins.
Behind him, Ysera rode her dusk-colored mare in silence, scanning the horizon with eyes that saw too much. Veylan, ever grumbling, walked with his blades drawn. Even the sand seemed to flinch at him.
"No shelter for miles," Ysera said. "But I sense… something buried beneath."
Kael stopped.
He had felt it too. Not in his skin. In his blood.
A memory. A voice.
"Your flame is not new, Kael. It is only… borrowed."
He crouched, brushing the sand aside. Beneath it—stone. Carved. Ancient.
Letters pulsed faintly beneath his fingers—written in the Old Flame Tongue, the lost language of the First Fireborne.
Ysera dismounted quickly, joining him. "You can read it?"
Kael nodded slowly.
"Only pieces."
He whispered aloud:
"Here lies the gate to what should not return."
"Let fire sleep beneath the crownless sun."
"May none remember the name… Sol'Vareth."
Ysera's eyes widened.
"That name hasn't been spoken since the Burning Age. Sol'Vareth was the first to tame fire. A god in flesh. They say he vanished when the flames turned on their masters."
Kael stood.
"Or… was sealed."
A thunderous rumble answered his words.
The sand beneath them collapsed.
Kael reached for Ysera, but the earth swallowed them whole.
They fell into memory.
Not darkness.
Light.
Golden fire wrapped them as images raced by:
A crown forged of living flame.
A city made of ash and crystal.
A man standing before a thousand kneeling fireborne—his voice shaking the world.
"I give you fire not to rule… but to protect."
Then betrayal. A circle of kings. A blade through the heart.
Chains of molten gold.
The name: Sol'Vareth
And his final whisper:
"When fire forgets mercy… I will return."
Kael hit stone.
He gasped, coughing. Ysera landed beside him, rolling to her feet.
They were in a temple.
No dust. No decay.
Lit torches lined the walls—though no one had touched them in an age.
Statues of flameborne warriors towered overhead. At the far end, beneath a sunless dome, stood a mural:
A man with Kael's eyes and Sol'Vareth's crown… wreathed in golden fire.
Kael stepped forward, heart pounding.
It was him.
Painted long before he was born.
"What… is this place?" Ysera whispered.
Before Kael could answer, a voice echoed behind them.
"It is prophecy."
They turned.
A figure in black and ember-red robes stepped from the shadows. Eyes of molten gold stared through them.
"I am the Prophet of the Burning Root, and you, Kael of Emberclaw… are not the end of the fire."
The prophet smiled.
"You are its beginning."
Kael stood still, his hand instinctively tightening around the Emberclaw. The mural behind him burned into his thoughts—his own face, painted in colors older than history.
Ysera stepped forward, her voice tense. "Who are you really?"
The prophet bowed, firelight dancing across his ancient robe.
"I am called Iryx, last flame-tongue of the Forgotten Line. I was born in the ashes of Sol'Vareth's fall. I was his scribe, his shadow… and his betrayer."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Then why aren't you dead?"
Iryx chuckled, though it sounded like fire eating dry wood. "Because the fire does not forget those who carry its true name."
He stepped closer, the embers in his eyes growing brighter. "You think yourself the end of Ashthorn. The destroyer of tyranny. The one who broke the Hollow Throne."
Kael said nothing.
Iryx continued. "But you are not the sword, Kael. You are the spark. You were never meant to end the flame—you were meant to ignite it anew."
Kael's voice cut through the chamber. "I didn't ask for destiny."
"No one does," Iryx whispered. "But you inherited more than a weapon. The Emberclaw chose you not because you defeated Ashthorn… but because you are what he could never become."
He turned to the mural—Kael with the flaming crown.
"That is not a prophecy of war. It is a warning. For when the flame forgets mercy, it becomes hunger. Sol'Vareth knew this. He sealed himself to stop it."
Ysera stepped between them. "Then what does the comet mean? Why now?"
Iryx's expression darkened. "Because Sol'Vareth is stirring. His prison beneath Gorath'Lur cracked the moment Ashthorn fell. The balance is broken."
He looked to Kael.
"And only you can face him."
Kael stepped back. "You said he was a god."
"No," Iryx said. "He was a man. But he has burned for centuries. If he wakes now… he will remember nothing but fire."
A deep silence fell.
Then Ysera asked, "So what must we do?"
Iryx turned, robes trailing sparks as he walked toward a sealed obsidian gate at the chamber's end.
"You must travel to Gorath'Lur. Into the Vault. There, you will find the Crown of the First Flame."
Kael frowned. "And if I wear it?"
"You may bind Sol'Vareth."
"And if I can't?"
Iryx stopped.
"Then the world will burn, and all its kings with it."
Far beneath them, in the Vault of Ashes, a molten eye opened.
And remembered Kael's name.
The Vault pulsed like a heartbeat buried beneath a continent of stone. Shadows flickered along its molten walls—some shaped like men, others like creatures that had never walked beneath the sun.
At its center stood the figure once known as Sol'Vareth.
But he no longer remembered his name.
Only the flame.
He hovered above a ring of scorched runes, chained by glyphs forged in the tongue of creation itself. His face was cracked obsidian, his eyes glowing embers. Yet now… the chains trembled. Each breath of the world loosened the locks.
And now, something new stirred within him.
"Kael…"
The name was a whisper. A tremor. A splinter of memory.
"My fire… carried by another."
He raised a hand, and the chains groaned. Sparks leapt across the vault, striking three ancient stones embedded in the walls—each one tied to a distant kingdom.
Valmere, where druids carved truth into trees.
Orvak, where blades ruled and magic was forbidden.
Caeryn, where the Queen dreamed in silence.
Fire spread through those stones, thin and unseen—carried in whispers.
Valmere, the Forest Kingdom
High Druid Elarion stood at the edge of the Moonspire, eyes closed in meditation. But tonight, the trees screamed.
Flames ran through the roots. Flowers wilted in seconds. Visions seized her mind:
A city of trees aflame.
A man of fire, chained no longer.
Kael… wearing the flaming crown.
She awoke choking on smoke—though no fire burned.
"This is a warning," she whispered.
But the voice inside her whispered back:
"No. It is an invitation."
Orvak, the Ironhold
The War King sharpened his blade in silence.
Then the forge burst into unnatural flame.
Not red.
Gold.
He dropped the blade as visions filled his mind—armies bowed in flame, his enemies turned to ash, and a single voice offering power.
"Unchain me… and rule the ash."
The War King smiled.
Caeryn, the Silent Court
Queen Avalyne dreamed.
And in that dream, she stood before a throne of smoke and gold. On it sat Kael—but his face was gone, burned away. He raised the Crown of Flame, and the world burned to silence.
She woke with tears on her cheeks.
And the bitter certainty that peace would not hold.
Back beneath the Scorched Expanse…
Kael stood before the obsidian gate, the Prophet Iryx chanting runes that had not been spoken in centuries.
Ysera placed a hand on Kael's shoulder. "You feel it, don't you?"
Kael nodded. "The world's shifting. As if fire is whispering to every soul it once touched."
Veylan spat. "I hate fire. And prophecies. And giant death-gods."
The gate opened.
Wind, thick with heat and memory, poured through.
Kael stepped forward.
Toward Gorath'Lur.
Toward the Crown.
Toward the man who once gave fire to the world—
—who now wanted it all back.
Gorath'Lur opened like a wound in the world.
The path beyond the obsidian gate twisted downward into a chasm lit by veins of red crystal—flameglass, pulsing with memories too ancient to be named. The air grew heavy, every breath thick with the weight of forgotten fire. Kael led the way, Emberclaw glowing faintly in his hand, more for guidance than comfort.
Behind him, Ysera whispered spells of warding under her breath. Even Veylan had gone quiet, his twin blades out, eyes shifting like a wolf in a haunted wood.
"This place," Ysera murmured, "wasn't built by mortals."
"No," Kael said. "It was buried to keep something in."
They passed relics of the old world.
Broken statues of fireborne kings.
Burned banners with symbols no longer known.
Carvings in walls that shimmered when Kael passed—as if recognizing him.
Each chamber deeper felt older, colder despite the heat pulsing from the walls.
In the sixth descent, they found a door carved from blackstone and bound with gold runes.
Ysera reached to decipher them, but the moment her fingers touched the surface, the air trembled—and the door spoke.
"Who seeks the Crown of Flame?"
Kael stepped forward.
"I do."
"What will you give to wear it?"
"…Everything."
The door paused.
"Then enter, Kael of Emberclaw. But know this—what burns within may consume not only the world… but you."
It opened without a sound.
The Hollow Deep awaited.
A vast chamber, circular, lit by a suspended sun-forge that had not dimmed in ten thousand years. Below it stood the Pedestal of Fire, and resting atop that ancient stone:
The Crown of the First Flame.
It was not forged of gold or steel—but of living fire, shaped and bound into a circlet that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Kael approached.
With every step, the voices grew louder—ancient tongues, forgotten names, and one word repeated through them all:
"Sol'Vareth… Sol'Vareth… Sol'Vareth…"
He reached out.
The moment his fingers grazed the crown, a shock tore through him. Visions split his mind:
Sol'Vareth's face, kind and bright.
Sol'Vareth betrayed.
Sol'Vareth burning.
Sol'Vareth becoming something else.
Then Kael saw himself—wearing the crown, standing on a mountain of ash, the world burning beneath his feet. Ysera, gone. Veylan, dead. The flame endless.
He staggered back.
Ysera caught him.
"You saw it?"
He nodded. "What I could become. What it might cost."
"And will you still take it?"
Kael looked at the crown again.
Then at the Emberclaw.
"No. Not yet."
He turned away.
"If I wear it now… I become fire. But I still need to be human."
Behind them, shadows stirred.
Iryx emerged from the tunnel, face drawn.
"You chose well," he said. "But it won't wait forever."
"What won't?" Kael asked.
Iryx looked back, toward the world above.
"Sol'Vareth is waking. And now… the kingdoms burn not from war, but desire."
Far away, in the iron halls of Orvak, the War King kneeled before a flame that whispered secrets. He smiled as his armies marched.
And in Caeryn, Queen Avalyne whispered to a mirror of flame, "Find him."
From the depths of that mirror, Sol'Vareth's molten gaze looked back.
The war began not with swords, but with silence.
In the high halls of Orvak, the War King stood atop the obsidian battlements, watching as his legions assembled. Ten thousand soldiers in flame-touched steel, each bearing the sigil of the New Flame—a blazing crown over a scorched earth.
The King's eyes glowed faintly now. Not from magic he understood, but from something older, something that whispered to him in dreams.
"Fire will free you," it had said. "Let ash remake what rust has ruined."
He had believed it.
Now he prepared to march.
Within the Queen's Mirror Tower in Caeryn, Avalyne stood alone before a pool of living fire. She had once sworn never to use the mirror's voice—but the dreams had become unbearable. Visions of Kael burning. The world kneeling before a man with no face. Herself, alone on a throne of embers.
The fire spoke.
"You wish to stop him."
"He carries the old fire. He cannot be trusted."
"Let me guide you."
Avalyne trembled. "You're not just a vision… are you?"
The flame pulsed.
"I am the memory of Sol'Vareth."
"And I only burn those who deserve it."
Outside, her knights received new orders. Secret envoys left the gates that night—headed for Orvak, for Valmere, and even for the Emberclaw Mountains.
Avalyne no longer sought peace.
She sought Kael.
Back in Gorath'Lur, Kael, Ysera, Veylan, and Iryx began their ascent.
"The crown's visions are growing stronger," Kael said, wiping sweat from his brow. "It's like it's… calling to the others."
"It is," Iryx confirmed grimly. "The First Flame touches all who've ever wielded power or been tempted by it. The world remembers its warmth—and it misses it."
Veylan growled. "So we're racing against mad kings and dreams. Grand."
They emerged into daylight just as a blood-colored dawn lit the Scorched Expanse. The air stank of sulfur and smoke—and in the far distance, faint columns of rising ash told a dark truth.
Orvak had begun to burn.
Not in ruin.
In conquest.
Ysera narrowed her eyes.
"They're not waiting for prophecy to end. They're trying to rewrite it."
Kael turned to her.
"Then we'll give them something they can't control."
He looked to the horizon—toward Valmere's forests.
"The druids knew Sol'Vareth before fire turned on them. If anyone remembers how to bind it again… they do."
Iryx nodded. "Then you must hurry. The fire spreads fast."
Kael raised Emberclaw, and flames curled around the blade—but this time, they did not hunger.
They listened.
"Then we move," Kael said. "Before the world forgets mercy."
Far beneath them, in the Hollow Vault, the Crown of the First Flame still pulsed on its pedestal.
Waiting.
Watching.
And in a distant kingdom where no fire should burn, a single candle flickered to life—unlit by any hand.