The air didn't settle after the Warden's disappearance—it rippled, charged with unseen tension. Every shadow stretched a little longer. Every flicker of wind carried an echo too close to a whisper. The desert of ash had changed.
They moved quickly through the Emberhollow Wastes, a lingering unease urging their steps. Even Eryssa, usually composed, had a hand on her blades at all times. Orin kept checking behind them, but the Warden had left no tracks. No scent. Nothing.
"He knew about the shards," Ember said, not for the first time. "He knew about Naelien."
"He knew about you," Orin corrected. "That's worse."
Ember didn't disagree. The title "Seeker of the Flame" echoed in her thoughts. She hadn't chosen it. But it clung to her now, as surely as the Triad Flame pulsed in her veins.
By nightfall, they reached the edge of a cliff. Below it sprawled a forgotten forest—charred in parts, but regrown in others, as if nature itself had fought to reclaim what fire had tried to erase. The cliffside bore carvings, faded by time: flame spirals, stars, and ancient runes Ember instinctively understood.
"This is it," she whispered. "The southern sanctuary."
They found a concealed path that wound downward. Trees bent away from them, not with fear, but reverence. And then—stone. A doorway, carved into the cliffside, half-buried under twisted roots and ivy. Ember stepped forward, placed her hand on the center.
The door responded to her flame.
With a sound like exhaling breath, it opened.
Inside was a vast, vaulted chamber, circular and echoing with old warmth. At its center was a pedestal, and on it: a second shard—this one larger, pulsing with a gentler, golden fire.
Ember approached slowly, but this time the shard did not wait. It leapt into her chest.
A rush of memory. A battlefield again, yes—but not fire. Music. Singing. A Flamebearer weaving flame and song together to shield the last refugees of a shattered city. Hope in every note. Light in every motion. The shard was called Solari, and it remembered joy.
Tears streamed down Ember's face as the memory passed.
"There was beauty," she murmured. "Even in the end. The flame wasn't just power. It was expression. A way to remember who we were."
But the warmth was cut short by a shift in the air.
From the far corner of the chamber came a grinding sound. Stone scraped. Dust fell. A hidden alcove opened—and inside stood the Warden once more, no longer veiled in shadow, but lit by the golden fire reflected in his armor.
"You continue to awaken them," he said.
Ember stood tall. "I will awaken all of them."
His gaze was unreadable through the molten visor. "Do you think the world will forgive what you uncover? Do you think it wants to remember?"
She clenched her fists, the Triad Flame and the Solari shard now pulsing in harmony. "If memory is dangerous, it's because someone made it that way."
The Warden did not attack this time. Instead, he bowed his head slightly. "Then let memory judge us all."
With a flick of his hand, he vanished again—this time leaving behind not silence, but a name etched into the stone floor:
Kael of the First Flame.
Orin stepped beside her. "He wasn't just a Warden."
Eryssa nodded. "He was one of you."
Ember stared at the name. She didn't know how she knew it, but she did.
Kael had once burned for justice. And now, he burned for silence.