The forest does not forget.
It remembers footsteps, even long faded.
And it never welcomes gods back without a price.
The firelight flickered low, dancing shadows across weathered tents and rusted armor.
They called themselves The Hollow Flame — a rebel cell too small to matter to the kingdoms above, too proud to be swallowed by silence. Veterans, deserters, forgotten bloodlines… they huddled around warmth and war stories, waiting for a future that never came.
Until she stepped out of the trees.
The watchman barely had time to draw his bow.
The air turned cold. The fire dimmed.
And then she was there — cloaked in tattered gray, her sword sheathed at her back, her eyes burning with a quiet that felt… ancient.
No footsteps.
No sound.
Just presence.
"Stop!" the guard called, trying to sound braver than he felt. "State your name!"
The woman didn't answer.
She simply looked at him — and in that gaze was something the man couldn't describe. Not power. Not menace.
History.
He lowered his bow.
The camp stirred as she walked in.
Tents rustled. Blades were unsheathed.
Captain Halric, a grizzled man with one eye and a voice like crushed stone, stepped forward. "We don't take in ghosts."
"I'm not a ghost," Seraphine replied.
Her voice was low. Measured. And somehow… familiar.
Halric narrowed his eye. "Then what are you?"
"A memory," she said. "And a warning."
They let her sit by the fire, but no one spoke.
Not at first.
She ate nothing. Drank nothing. Just stared into the flames as if seeing something no one else could. Her sword remained untouched at her side, though the warriors could feel it — a pressure, like heat radiating from a star just out of reach.
A young scout named Renna finally broke the silence. "You don't look like one of us."
Seraphine glanced at her. "I'm not."
Renna swallowed. "Then why are you here?"
Seraphine looked back to the flames.
"Because the world is cracking."
"Because shadows are gathering beneath old stones."
"And because someone I once knew… has awakened something that should've stayed buried."
The fire popped. Sparks scattered.
Halric crossed his arms. "You talk like a priest."
"I buried the last of them," Seraphine said without blinking. "They mistook ritual for understanding."
The silence returned.
But it was thicker now — weighted.
Someone whispered her name behind her back, though no one had said it aloud.
Seraphine.
Seraphine Nightfall.
The Flameborn General.
The Forsaken Saint.
In the far corner of the camp, a child woke from a nightmare. She cried softly, pointing at Seraphine's shadow.
"She's the one," the child said. "The lady from my dream."
Her mother hushed her, but the words lingered.
No one in the Hollow Flame knew who this woman truly was.
Not yet.
But deep down, they remembered her.
Even if their minds had forgotten.
Their blood had not.
That night, as the rebels lay uneasy in their tents, Seraphine remained by the fire, unmoving.
She watched the flames.
And the flames showed her visions.
Ash, standing before a broken crown.
Kael, bleeding in the rain.
And something else…
A throne carved from obsidian, rising from the ruins of a city she once burned to save.
On that throne sat a figure she could not yet name.
Not Ash.
Not her.
But someone watching them both.
Waiting.
The wind whispered through the camp.
And Seraphine whispered back:
"I won't let it happen again."
"Not this time."