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Chapter 18 - Chapter Eighteen – The Rise of the Flameborn

The estate no longer felt like a sanctuary. It had become a battleground dressed in silence, the walls whispering of war and the ghosts yet to fall. Raina stood in the east wing, staring into a mirror that refused to reflect who she once was.

Her eyes were no longer brown. They burned with molten gold. And beneath her skin, something shimmered like a pulse of flame searching for a way out. She lifted her hand to touch the mirror's surface, but it fogged beneath her fingertips.

Behind her, the door creaked. Lucien stepped in, silent and barefoot, his shirt unbuttoned, runes still etched along his collarbone from the Pact of Eclipse.

"I feel like I'm coming undone," she whispered, not turning.

Lucien stopped just behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders, grounding her with his heat. "You're not coming undone. You're coming alive."

She turned to him then. "What if I burn everything?"

"Then I'll burn with you."

In the mansion's war room, Elias poured over ancient texts while Maeva paced like a caged wolf.

"She's shifting too quickly," Elias muttered. "Her body wasn't meant to carry this much power this fast."

"We don't have time to let her evolve," Maeva snapped. "The Hollow Realm won't wait."

"If we force her"

"She'll break," Maeva said. "Or she'll become something worse."

That night, under a sky streaked with fire, Raina stepped into the training yard.

Lucien was waiting. "Hit me."

"I could hurt you," she said.

"You will."

The first blow cracked the air.

They moved like dancers locked in violence, her power flaring with every strike. When Lucien caught her wrist mid-attack, the energy burst between them knocked them both onto the ground.

They lay breathless, side by side, staring up at the stars.

"I'm not stable," Raina said.

Lucien reached for her hand. "Then let me be your balance."

The sky turned red the next morning. Ash drifted like snow. Wards along the estate pulsed weakly, on the brink of collapse.

Then she arrived.

A woman of fire and shadow walked through the front gate, no guards, no warning. She didn't speak. The doors opened for her like they remembered her.

Raina met her in the great hall.

"Flameborn," the woman said, her voice like heat rolling off coals. "It is time."

"Who are you?" Raina asked.

"I am your Trial."

Then the world caught fire.

Raina woke beneath rubble, coughing soot. Lucien dragged her up with blood on his hands. Maeva and Elias stumbled from the shattered hall.

"She wasn't just a trial," Maeva coughed. "She was a judge."

"They're testing her," Elias said. "To see if she survives the prophecy."

"She will," Lucien growled.

Raina wiped ash from her cheek. "No. I'll do more than survive. I'll become."

In the days that followed, fire became her companion. It healed her. Changed her. Made her faster, stronger less human.

Her eyes glowed at night. Her voice could crack stone. Her presence bent shadows.

"She's slipping," Maeva whispered to Elias.

"No," Elias replied. "She's becoming Flameborn."

"But will she still be Raina?"

He didn't answer.

On the fourth night, the Hollow Realm opened.

A fissure split the sky in the western woods, and time buckled around it.

Raina, Lucien, Maeva, and Elias stepped through.

Inside, memory twisted with reality. Statues lined the forest path each one a different version of Raina, frozen in triumph or terror. Her past lives stared back with burning eyes.

At the path's end sat a black throne on a raised obsidian pedestal. Above it, a crown of flame hovered.

Raina approached.

"Careful," Lucien said.

She looked back once. "There's no such thing anymore."

She sat.

The crown descended.

It pierced her skull like fire through glass. Pain bloomed. Power screamed.

Her skin split light. Her mouth opened in a silent cry.

And then

She rose.

Flames danced in her hair. Wings of fire unfurled behind her. Her eyes were pure gold.

"I remember everything," she said, voice like thunder.

Lucien dropped to one knee.

"I am the Flameborn," she declared. "I am the Huntress. And I will burn the dark away."

Back in the realm of the living, villagers stirred in their beds, sweating from heat that shouldn't have existed.

Beasts in the forest bowed low.

And far beyond the veil, something stirred.

Because the Flameborn had risen.

And war was coming.

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