It began the night after their bond rekindled.
Cael woke, gasping, his lungs aching as if the air in Navoris had turned to smoke. His hands clawed the stone beside his cot, sweat beading across his temples. But it wasn't the fire that chased him from sleep.
It was her.
A woman cloaked in velvet shadows and silver bone charms. A witch, perhaps. But in the dream, she wasn't monstrous. Not at first. She smiled gently as she stirred a stew of rosewater and ash. Her home was beautiful in the way thorns were—twisting vines of silver and black wrapping around a tower nestled within a forest of dead trees. But it was lively. The man beside her laughed often. He built her tables, fetched her fruit, even braided flowers into her midnight hair. They lived without flame but needed none.
It felt oddly like peace.
Until the dream changed.
Cael could never tell when it happened, only that the air thickened and the light dimmed. Then the laughter stopped.
The tower was no longer a sanctuary but a cage.
The witch walked the nearby village, her robe dragging over the soil like a veil of mourning. She smiled at everyone she met—smiled even as she whispered spells that made their veins glow blue. One by one, they fell. Children with silver eyes, elders with flame-threaded hair, even animals. She bent over each of them and plucked something from their chest.
A pearl.
Small, opalescent, and glowing faintly blue. She collected them in a pouch at her waist, humming the same melody she once sang in the kitchen.
And then—blood.
Not a scream. Not a fight. Just the quiet, horrifying silence of absence.
Dozens of villagers lay lifeless.
Then the man came back.
He ran through the clearing, barefoot and wild-eyed, calling her name. His voice cracked. His arms trembled. "Give them back," he said, over and over. "I'll do anything. Just give them back."
But she only looked at him with sorrow.
"You are what I made the pearls for," she whispered.
She crushed one pearl between her fingers.
The man screamed—not from pain, but as if his very soul had been broken open.
Cael bolted upright in bed, fists clenched, breath ragged.
The next morning, he sat at the low hearth, hands wrapped around a cup of bitterroot tea. Orion was rummaging through the dried roots again, grumbling about Velastra throwing out his favorite ginger slab. Velastra, however, sat close to Cael, watching his too-pale face with growing concern.
He had said nothing all morning.
Finally, she asked, "Cael?"
He didn't answer right away. Then, slowly, he began to speak.
He told them everything.
The witch. The man. The laughter that turned to ash. The pearls.
Orion, at first, rolled his eyes. "A dream? No... I think you are having visions."
And as Cael described the pearls, Orion stopped.
"Blue, you said?" he asked.
Cael nodded.
Orion's face went grim. "Those aren't just pearls. That's a soul-harvesting ritual. Forbidden in every flame court. Ancient witches used it to isolate and trap spiritual fragments—usually in times of war. One pearl per soul. If she crushed one…"
"She erased someone," Cael finished quietly.
Velastra's jaw tightened. "And she used it for him?"
Cael nodded. "He begged her. He loved her, the man's eyes were filled with sorrow, regret but not anger. He kept begging but the woman showed no mercy. And the dream stops there."
Orion stood, crossing the chamber. "It could be your own fractured memories trying to restore themselves. That kind of magic is rare… but dreams like that seem not yours... more like Navoris is trying to tell something."
Velastra looked to Cael. "Did she look like anyone you knew?"
Cael hesitated.
"She looked like you."
The silence that followed was immediate and sharp.
Cael turned his face away. "Not you now. Not even then. Just… the shape of you. But colder. Like someone had drained all the warmth out of your fire and left only the control."
Velastra didn't flinch. She folded her hands tightly in her lap. She tried to remember every age of her past life. However, none of those moments had ever happened.
Orion raised an eyebrow. "I've never heard of such history."
Orion paused. "But according to Irithiel's records, Novaris was a previous cell of ash-vaults. Old remnants from before the Cinderspire was sealed."
"Remnants of what?"
His voice dropped. "Of the first oathbearers. The ones who burned too brightly to remain human… and not bright enough to remain as immortal."
Velastra paled.
She looked back toward Cael's.
And deep below, in the roots of Navoris, something stirred again—slow, rhythmic… and familiar.
---
The fire in the hearth crackled, but the warmth it gave felt dulled—muted under the weight of Cael's 30th telling. Silence stretched between the three of them. Not uncomfortable, but dense. As though even the walls of the sanctuary were listening.
Velastra sat with her back straight, her fingers laced tightly in her lap. Orion leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, brow furrowed in thought. Cael, pale beneath the ghostlight glow of the embers, breathed slowly, as if fearing his next breath might carry the dream back into him.
"It wasn't just a nightmare," Cael said finally, voice low. "There was something real in it. Not just fear. Recognition."
Velastra stood, the hem of her robe trailing behind her as she moved to the carved window. Outside, the sky held no stars, only the smear of twilight that had not shifted in weeks.
"This place," she murmured, "was once a prison even the gods refused to speak of. Do you remember the old texts, Orion?"
Orion nodded. "Only in fragments. Old High Tongue. Lost scriptures the Court of Flame forbade even archivists from transcribing."
Cael reached up, fingers curling loosely at his temples. "That witch… she wore a crown like flame. And those pearls—those weren't just souls. They were something more."
Velastra turned to face them both. Her gaze had steadied, but something behind it had shifted.
Orion stood as well, brushing ash from his tunic. "If there's something bound beneath Navoris—or buried in its walls—we're not leaving until we find it."
Cael gave a wry, tired smile. "Good. Because we're already exiled. What's a little heresy on top of that?"
Velastra didn't smile. She sat next to Cael, taking both his hands.
"I'll regret it," she whispered. "Not as a flamebearer, not as a wife—but as the one who damned you here with me. I will not let Navoris take you piece by piece."
"And if it must be unraveled," Orion added, his eyes catching the firelight, "then let's tear down every veil this place keeps."
The three of them stood in that moment—not prince, not princess, not healer—but exiles born anew by their shared resolve.
Outside, in the cliffside dark, the wind howled against ancient stone.
Far below, beneath the roots of Navoris, something began to stir.
And it remembered their names.