Not all prisons are made of stone.
Some are spun from grief, and locked from the inside.
It was not darkness.
It was silence.
Not the kind that brings peace, but the kind that gnaws — where time folds in on itself and meaning thins until all that remains is waiting.
Seraphine floated.
There was no ground beneath her feet. No sky above. Just endless light… pale and aching. Like a memory of a sun long dead.
She had forgotten her name.
She had forgotten the sound of her own voice.
But she remembered him.
The boy with shadow in his eyes.
The warrior who never bowed.
Ash.
The name drifted to her like ash in wind.
When it touched her, it burned.
"Ash…" she whispered.
The word carried weight. It echoed through the light. And with it came cracks.
The stillness trembled.
And suddenly… the silence bled.
She stood in a field of flame.
But it did not burn her.
Around her lay bodies — warriors of gold and red, their armor shattered, their hands still clutching broken swords. The sky was torn, bleeding fire and shadow, and at the center of it all stood Vaeroth.
Cloaked in dusk. Crowned in ruin.
And before him knelt Ash, bloodied and bowed.
"Forgive me," his voice rasped"
"I couldn't stop it."
Seraphine reached for him — but her hands passed through his body like smoke.
A memory?
A vision?
Or a warning?
Before she could understand, the sky screamed.
Now she stood in a different place.
A throne room — grand once, now overrun with vines. Moonlight poured through a shattered roof. In the center sat a woman with her face hidden in shadow, but Seraphine knew it was herself.
Crowned in flame.
Eyes empty.
Ash lay dead at her feet.
And on her lips… a smile.
She stumbled back, gasping.
The vision shattered like glass.
No.
That is not who I am.
That is not who I was.
…Was it?
She fell.
Through light.
Through memory.
Through guilt.
And then—
A voice caught her.
Deep and distant. Ancient and familiar.
"Wake, Flamekeeper."
"The world begins to burn again."
"And you are no longer permitted to sleep."
Her eyes snapped open.
For the first time in centuries, Seraphine breathed.
Far away, across mountains and kingdoms, Ash felt the pull.
His body tensed as he rode with Kael down the old roads, Ravenmark rising in the distance like a stormcloud. He didn't need to say a word.
Kael looked over.
"You felt it, didn't you?"
Ash nodded once.
"She's awake."
"And the world will never be the same again."