Mount Erendis groaned.
It wasn't the sound of stone shifting, but something deeper — like breath, like waiting.
Serenya Valir stood at the edge of the final ascent, where the blackened trail became less of a road and more of a scar carved into the mountain's side. The air here was thinner. Every word tasted like ash. And yet the soldiers marched in perfect rhythm, as if fear had been burned out of them long ago.
They were almost there.
Behind her, Archon-General Tharek Solen surveyed the slope with grim satisfaction. "It welcomes us."
"No," Serenya murmured, mostly to herself. "It remembers us."
They made camp within the Cradle of Embers, a barren plateau known in old songs as the place where stars once fell and were swallowed. Here, surrounded by stone monoliths etched in dead languages, the Dominion's holy engineers began unsealing the mountain.
Massive gears were turned. Runes chiseled into place. Chains pulled taut. Somewhere beneath, ancient wards stirred, breaking apart with an audible crack.
And still the mountain did not resist.
That night, in the sanctuary tent, Serenya lit the flame mirror — a shallow basin of oil and ember used to commune with the higher order.
But the flame did not show her the gods.
It showed her Kaelen.
He stood in darkness, holding a blade that was not his. He was older. His eyes heavier. And behind him: the Vault, already open.
He will reach it first, a voice whispered.
He will choose wrong.
Unless you make him remember.
Serenya's hand trembled. She extinguished the mirror.
Outside, soldiers prayed in low, fervent voices. But some — especially the younger ones — avoided the central pyres entirely, their eyes turned toward the stars instead of flame.
Faith was splintering. Even here, even now.
She found Aelin, a novice acolyte she had mentored since he was thirteen, sitting alone on a ledge near the edge of the plateau.
"You should rest," she said softly.
"I dreamed of the Vault," Aelin replied. "But it wasn't full of light."
"What did you see?"
"A child," he whispered. "Made of ash. Crying. Asking me to leave it buried."
The next morning, as the Dominion's excavation reached its final threshold, a massive obsidian door was uncovered. It bore no handles, no hinges — only a spiral sigil at its center, glowing faintly with internal flame.
Serenya's breath caught.
This was it. The Vault of the First Flame.
Tharek approached the door, his voice a blade.
"Priestess Valir," he commanded. "Prepare the rite."
But Serenya did not move.
Kaelen would arrive soon.
And if he didn't stop this, she might have to.
Inside her robes, she touched the hidden scroll once more — the one she had stolen from the Grand Archive. The last line haunted her:
The First Flame remembers the hands that broke it.
And it does not forgive.