The ember in Mara's hand would not die.
It didn't burn like fire. It pulsed like a heartbeat—quiet, steady, ancient. She kept it wrapped in cloth, but even wrapped, it called. Not in words, but in pulls—like a tide drawing her not to the sea, but somewhere deeper.
Somewhere older.
She had faced the Prime. She had united the shards. She had closed the Furnace Gate.
But this ember was not from the shards.
It was something else.
---
The Unseen Path
Two days' ride beyond the Frostwound border, the land shifted. Trees bent inward. Stones whispered her name. Not aloud—inwards, inside her mind.
Talon had stayed behind to help rebuild. Tessara was in the south. Serai watched the skies.
But Mara had to walk this path alone.
At dusk, she reached a hollow where no map dared name. Wind turned upward here, and the earth cracked like dry skin.
In the center was a monument of flame… burning upside-down.
And beside it stood a figure wrapped in silver and ash.
"You've brought it," they said. Their voice was neither male nor female—both, and more. A voice older than kings.
"I didn't know what it was," Mara answered.
"You carried it anyway. That's why it chose you."
They stepped closer. Their face shimmered—half-forgotten, shifting constantly.
"I am the Keeper of the Kindling Vault."
Mara narrowed her eyes. "Is this another order?"
"No. This is the first. Before Vessel. Before Shards. Before Flame."
---
The Kindling Vault
The Keeper reached toward her palm.
The ember rose on its own, floating between them.
"When the gods forged the world," the Keeper said, "they left behind one thing they could not take with them. Not light. Not shadow. Not balance."
"What, then?" Mara asked.
The Keeper smiled.
> "Curiosity."
"The will to wonder. To burn not for war or power… but for discovery."
The ember blazed bright—and a door opened in the sky.
Behind it: stars.
But not stars Mara knew. They spun wrong. They whispered. They sang.
---
A New Flame
"You sealed the Heart," the Keeper said, "but the world is not done burning. Something woke with you."
Mara reached out to the ember once more. This time, it did not resist.
It settled in her chest—not like the shards. Not to be carried.
To be kindled.
A second fire now burned in her: not memory, not grief, not judgment.
Possibility.
And as the sky-door shimmered closed, the Keeper whispered one last warning:
> "The last fire wasn't the end.
It was only the first chapter."
---