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**Chapter Thirteen: City Below Flame**
The path twisted down through fissures in the earth, paved with obsidian cracked like old glass. The deeper we descended, the more the air changed—thicker, warmer, and pulsing faintly, as if the ground itself remembered the fire that had once lived here.
Kaelen walked beside me, her stormcloak pulled tight around her shoulders. The Watcher said nothing, but his hand never left the hilt of his blade.
Beneath Virelai, there was no sky. No sun. Only red light that seeped from veins in the stone, like the earth itself had bled and never healed.
And then, we found the gate.
Not a door. Not a passage.
A wall of fire—suspended in midair, burning without smoke, moving like breath. At its center was a mark.
The same symbol burned into my chest.
The sword on my back vibrated once.
"He built this," the Watcher murmured. "At the height of his power. A city beneath the city. A place no one could follow… not even her."
"She tried," I said softly. "Didn't she?"
He nodded. "And nearly died doing it."
Kaelen placed a hand on the fire wall. It didn't burn her—but it refused her.
I stepped forward. The mark on my chest shimmered. The flames bent toward me… and parted.
The city beyond was silent.
Built from ashstone and light, it unfolded in spirals around a ruined temple. Strange trees with silver leaves stood still in molten gardens. Statues of beings I couldn't name lined the walkways—some with wings, some with horns, some with faces too blurred to remember.
Then I heard it.
Music.
Low, haunting. A single instrument, plucked slowly. Notes that tugged at memory, pulling threads from my soul.
"Welcome," a voice said.
He stood in the center of the road ahead, cloaked in shadow and silk. Taller than I'd imagined. Paler. Eyes like burnt sunlight, glowing from within.
He didn't raise his weapon.
He raised his hands.
"I've been waiting," he said. "For the only flame I never meant to lose."
My father.
And suddenly, the fire inside me no longer felt like a question.
It felt like the start of a war.
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