The Citadel of Memory stirred.
Its three Memory Bearers—Ashara, Corven, and Lysara—stood in the Hall of Echoes, where ancient thoughts slumbered, bound in crystal and dust. Wind danced through the lattice ceilings, carrying threads of long-forgotten voices. But now, the wind screamed of fire.
Ashara touched the Memory Pool, her fingers brushing its surface like silk. It shimmered—not with blue light, but a deep orange, flickering like embers.
"She's awakening," she said, voice tight. "The First Flame."
Corven crossed his arms, his mechanical arm creaking softly. "We sealed her memory in the deepest vault. How can she stir now?"
Lysara, ever silent, turned her golden eyes toward the east. "Someone touched her name."
Ashara closed her eyes, and a vision burned behind her lids: a ship, a raven, a tower that bled mist. A man with a mark of silence upon his back—Kael.
"He's an Echo-Walker," she said. "One of the last."
Corven scoffed. "Relics and dream-chasers. They hear what they want."
"No," Lysara said calmly. "He didn't seek her. She called him."
That silenced the room.
Far beneath the Citadel, in the Chamber of Sealed Fire, ancient chains bound a sphere of flickering light. It pulsed once—a heartbeat. Then again.
A voice, female and sorrowful, echoed through the depths:
"I am not your ending.
I was your beginning."
The guards posted there—blind monks who swore to never speak—trembled.
And still, the sphere glowed.
Back in the Hall, Ashara looked at the other two. "We must prepare for breach."
Corven frowned. "The Flame was sealed with two vows: the Vow of Silence, and the Vow of Forgetting. If she's returning, that means both vows have been broken."
Ashara nodded grimly. "One by Kael. The other... we don't know yet."
Lysara unsheathed her twin blades. They shimmered with memorysteel—metal forged from solidified time.
"I'll find Kael."
Ashara placed a hand on her shoulder. "Not to kill him."
Lysara gave a faint smile. "Unless he gives me reason."
Elsewhere, in the Whispering Isles, Kael wandered the outer reaches of the tower's base. Symbols had begun to rise from the ground—glyphs from the Age of Sparks, a lost civilization that once tried to harness divine emotion as energy.
The glyphs burned orange under his feet.
"This place isn't just remembering," he murmured. "It's waking up."
The raven circled overhead.
"You've stirred something vast, Kael. Do you still want the truth?"
He looked toward the horizon. "I want to know why she wept."
The tower behind him shifted—no longer ruinous, but reforming, regrowing its spires like living bone.
Something inside was trying to be remembered.
And it would not be denied.