Back in the City of Stars, the Flame Pool no longer shimmered with certainty.
It hissed. It bubbled.
And now, for the first time in recorded memory… it cracked.
A hairline fracture ran across the sacred stone rim — not enough to collapse it, but enough to shake the Keepers to their core.
For Elyan, it was the first sign that control was slipping.
---
"They've gone too far," one of the senior Keepers, Marien, said as she examined the flame. "This spiral sickness… it's spreading."
"It's not a sickness," another whispered too loudly. "It's evolution."
Elyan's sharp gaze cut through the chamber. "Who said that?"
No one replied.
But they all knew.
The doubt had begun.
And it was growing like wildfire beneath the surface.
---
In the southern barracks, young initiates were beginning to question.
Not openly — not yet.
But in corners.
In shared glances.
In whispers passed beneath training swords and doctrine scrolls.
