The storm had not passed. It had only just begun.
Kiva left the chamber silently after handing Sylara the scroll, sensing her friend's soul was a battlefield still smoldering. Sylara remained by the hearth, the emberlight casting molten shadows across her pale skin. The scroll lay curled in her lap like a sleeping serpent, its words branded into her memory.
"When the soul-bound flame is severed before its time, the girl shall awaken. Not alone. Not whole. But watched—by the Hollow, by the gods, and by that which hunts even them."
---
The next gleam.
Kiva entered on silent feet, her cloak drawn tight around her shoulders, eyes gleaming with nervous energy. "Are you sure about this?" she whispered.
Sylara turned, slow and deliberate. She nodded.
Kiva exhaled shakily, revealing a folded strip of parchment—an old map she'd copied from a half-burned scroll hidden beneath the archives. "Ashen Reaches. It's where the Riftguard used to bring condemned mages. There's something there, Sylara. Something the prophecy was pointing toward."
Sylara took the map and tucked it into her belt. The gesture was answer enough.
---
Night cloaked Riftkeep in velvet blue, the moon a pale disc hidden behind banks of smoke-streaked clouds. Sylara moved in silence, the echoes of her footsteps muffled by the old dust of the archive's forbidden wing. Behind her, Kiva followed, her breath shallow but steady. Neither spoke. The only sound was the quiet creak of ancient hinges and the occasional rustle of parchment.
The Ashen Reaches were not on any official map.
Built within the hollowed bones of the ruined Embervault, the oldest section of Riftkeep, they were long forgotten beneath newer wings and deeper silences. It was Kiva who led them—still cloaked in midnight garb and armed with no more than a flickering flame-orb balanced in her palm.
The entrance to the Ashen Reaches was buried deep, tucked behind a sliding shelf carved with rune-scars long worn by time. It had taken them hours to decipher the locking sequence. When they finally entered, the chamber greeted them with cold air, the scent of ash and stone, and something older. Something watching.
They moved deeper, past crumbling murals and shattered sealstones. And then—
They saw it.
A colossal statue, half-swallowed by the earth and blackened by fire, yet still whole. A girl stood with a crown of jagged flame upon her brow —her stance proud, a hand outstretched, her eyes cast forward into something unseen. At her side: a great wolf, fur etched in silver veins, mouth slightly open as if in mid-growl. Runes wrapped around their feet in spiraling patterns that pulsed faintly when Sylara stepped closer.
Her breath caught.
The wolf's gaze, sharp and silver, mirrored Nyx's exactly.
I've seen this place before," Sylara murmured. "In dreams… in fragments. Nyx always stood here. And the flame on the crown—it wasn't carved. It burned."
Beneath the statue's base, barely legible through centuries of grime, lay script in ancient Ember glyphs. Kiva brushed it clean, voice trembling as she read aloud:
"When the world split and gods bled into ash, she came with a spark not her own. One born of skyfire and shadow—tethered by soul, not blood. Her coming shall awaken the Hunt once silenced."
Sylara reached out and touched the carved wolf's flank.
The moment her fingers met stone, the runes ignited.
A pulse shuddered through the ground. Air twisted with unseen voices—chants long buried under time. Visions struck her like lightning: fire raining from torn skies, gods falling like stars, and one girl walking between ruin and rebirth, eyes aflame.
She stumbled back, panting. Nyx's presence stirred faintly in the recesses of her mind—a ghost of warmth, a flicker of breath. Not whole. Not healed. But there.
Kiva approached the base, brushing away soot and vines
"There's an inscription," she murmured. "In Runic Highscript... Gods. I can barely read it."
"They tried to erase this," Kiva said, voice thick. "The prophecy. The war. All of it."
Sylara stepped beside her, fingers tracing the ancient letters. They pulsed warm under her skin.
"Because it wasn't just about gods," Sylara murmured. "It was about us. Me."
**"When the Flame-Bound walks alone, the Hollow shall stir. The gods shall recall their debts, and the wolf shall bleed for the world."
Another inscription gleamed on the back wall, revealed only under Kiva's lamp:
"One shall awaken the End. And the End shall not come gently."**
"She will not fall to shadow nor flame, but the silence between. And in that silence, something greater shall listen."
Light cascaded from the ceiling, illuminating frescoes hidden in the gloom. Celestial murals danced—gods of fire, stone, wind, and shadow. Above them loomed a warAs the runes dimmed again and the statue stood silent once more, both girls understood something had changed.
Figures of divine beings clashing, tearing realms apart. The Wolf-God biting the throat of a Serpent-Star. A girl with flame in her hands and grief in her eyes standing between them, torn in twoNot just within Sylara—but around her.
"Is this the God War?" Kiva whisperedShe wasn't being hunted just to be stopped.
Sylara nodded slowly. "It was more than a war. It was... a sundering."
She was being hunted to be silenced before the world could remember who she was destined to be.
Another figure emerged in the mural—faceless, a shadow wrapped in mirrors, standing at the edge of the battlefieldAnd something ancient was listening in the Hollow's breath, waiting for her to awaken.
A crackling noise broke the silence—like a breath drawn after a thousand years.Sylara's heart thudded.
Suddenly, the runes above them flickered.
The air thickened, pressure building in their skulls. Then a voice—not heard, but felt.
A rumble echoed through the vault.
The flame-orb in Kiva's palm flickered erratically.
And then—another whisper. Not from Kiva.
Not from Sylara.
But from the air itself.
"She walks again. Bound, but not broken. Watched, but not hidden. She will burn, and the world will remember flame."
"The price was paid. The bond, broken. The awakening begins."
Both girls spun. The statue now radiated a soft light, its crown's jagged flame etched anew in gold fire.
Kiva dropped to one knee, overwhelmed. Sylara did not move.
She couldn't. Her limbs trembled. Her eyes locked onto the wolf. Her soul ached. But something inside her stirred—slow and vast.
Not grief. Not pain.
Power.
The same force that once surged through her when Nyx howled beside her in the woods. But now it was fragmented—missing a half.
Kiva rose slowly. "This… this is part of something bigger, isn't it?"
Sylara finally spoke. Her voice cracked like thunder wrapped in ash.
"Yes. And we are already too late."
A distant howl echoed from somewhere deep beneath the earth.
Not Nyx.
But something that remembered him.
As the runes dimmed again and the statue stood silent once more, both girls understood something had changed.
Not just within Sylara—but around her.
She wasn't being hunted just to be stopped.
She was being hunted to be silenced before the world could remember who she was destined to be.
And something ancient was listening in the Hollow's breath, waiting for her to awaken.
Kiva reached for her arm. "We need to leave. If the Riftguard catch us—"
"I know."
But Sylara's eyes remained fixed on the girl and her wolf.
Not prophecy.
Not legend.
A memory written into stone.
And beneath it all, a promise:
That fire, once born, could never be unmade.
---