The air was different now.
Where silence once clung like ash, there was now a hum—low, ancient, and alive. Aryan stood beside the girl, their joined hands still faintly aglow. But it wasn't just the warmth of their powers resonating—it was the thrum of something deeper, something older.
The pact had been reignited.
But with it, came consequences.
The stone chamber trembled once more, not in collapse, but in awakening. Across the walls, new symbols bled into the surface—runes that hadn't been there before. They pulsed in rhythm with Aryan's heartbeat.
Then, from the shadows, a voice emerged.
"You've bound the flame to the moon again."
Aryan's eyes narrowed. "Who's there?"
A figure stepped into the light—hooded, tall, and wrapped in threads of both crimson and silver. The mask over his face bore no eyes, only a single mark etched into its surface: a crescent eclipse burning from within.
"I am the Keeper of the Broken Vows," the figure said. "And you… are about to face what you once ran from."
The girl flinched. "No… it's too soon—"
But Aryan stepped forward.
"I don't run anymore."
The Keeper raised a hand. "Then bear witness, Flamebearer. To the name… you etched in ember."
The chamber erupted in a blaze of light.
And a memory Aryan had sealed even from himself came flooding back—
A battlefield of shattered stars.
A final embrace beneath a dying sun.
A name spoken with blood on his lips.
Not Lirael.
But someone else.
Someone he failed.
The true reason his Flame Seed refused to die.
The true origin of the vow.
---
Author's Note (R.E. Solcrest):
A memory forgotten. A vow broken before the world even began. Who was she? And what does it mean now that Aryan has remembered someone beyond even Lirael? The truth
is rising—and with it, a fire the heavens once feared.