There was no rest after her return.
No welcome feast.
No banners.
Only the scent of blood soaked into the palace stone.
Selene stood at the base of the royal stair, the hem of her cloak dragging across dried crimson.
It wasn't hers.
It wasn't fresh.
But it was deliberate.
A message from those who had failed to unseat her in public and now clawed from the shadows.
Cassian met her gaze across the corridor.
His hands were bandaged.
His coat torn at the sleeves.
But his eyes?
They were steady again.
"I killed three of them," he said.
Selene nodded.
"And the rest?"
"We're chasing them through the tunnels now. Elric found a hidden door beneath the council chamber."
"Of course he did."
The palace wasn't just under siege from the outside anymore.
It was at war with itself.
But Selene didn't rage.
She walked past Cassian and toward the throne room without a word.
Not to punish him.
Not to ignore him.
Because she was already thinking past this.
Past the blood.
Past the palace.
To what came next.
The Flamekeeper's final words had not left her.
"You are flame but you must still be forged."
"The Trial of Embers awaits you. And you must choose to enter."
"No army. No witness. No escape."
Selene had chosen.
She didn't wait for war to come again.
She would go to the heart of it and carve her place with fire.
The Trial was not part of the mortal world.
It could not be found on land.
It could not be summoned with spells.
Only those claimed by the Flame could walk through the gate.
And even then, not all returned.
At midnight, Selene walked to the old forge tower, sealed since the Great Collapse nearly a century ago.
No guards.
No steel.
Only the key she had taken from the Drowned Ember temple, its handle shaped like a serpent devouring itself.
She turned the lock.
And the gate opened inward.
Into black.
Inside, there was no air.
Only pressure.
The walls pulsed as if they were alive.
And beneath her feet, the stone hissed with whispers in a language older than any written tongue.
She walked barefoot.
Because the Trial stripped away all things: titles, armor, pride.
She came as Selene.
And she would either rise…
Or not come back at all.
The first chamber was darkness.
Not absence of light.
But the presence of shadow.
She saw nothing.
But voices surrounded her.
"You were never queen."
"You were a tool."
"Your crown was built by dead hands."
"Your power was borrowed."
"And soon it will be reclaimed."
Selene didn't argue.
She didn't shout.
She only whispered:
"And yet, I'm still here."
The darkness recoiled.
Light bloomed.
And the path opened.
The second chamber was memory.
She was ten again.
Standing in the courtyard of her family's estate, sword in hand, face smeared with tears and dirt.
Her mother stood over her.
"You'll never survive if you keep crying."
"Wipe your eyes, Selene. Or someone will take them from you."
Selene blinked.
But the memory remained.
Another flash,
She was seventeen.
The first day she tasted blood, not her own, in an alley in the slums.
Another,
She stood over Cassian's bed, knife in hand, on the wedding night when the Circle told her to slit his throat.
She had hesitated.
And hated herself for it.
The room spun with every version of her.
The weak girl.
The broken pawn.
The killer who didn't kill.
"You are a mask," the chamber hissed.
"Remove it. Or die with it."
Selene closed her eyes.
And reached into her own chest.
Pulled.
Not flesh.
Not bone.
But flame.
A searing ember where her heart should be.
She held it aloft.
The memories screamed.
And burned.
The chamber cracked.
And opened.
The final room was silence.
Pure.
Heavy.
Selene knelt on the obsidian floor.
In front of a mirror.
It reflected nothing.
Not her face.
Not her flame.
Only empty glass.
Then a voice behind her.
Hers.
"This is the last lie."
"You think fire will save you."
"But fire consumes."
"And when it does, what will be left of you?"
She did not answer.
She stood.
Faced the mirror.
And placed both hands against the cold glass.
"If nothing is left,"
"Then I will become the fire."
The mirror shattered.
Flame engulfed her.
Not pain.
Not destruction.
Transformation.
When she opened her eyes, she was standing in the forge tower once again.
But something had changed.
Her cloak was gone.
Her skin glowed faintly, as if her veins had become ember-lit.
And in her palm?
A crown.
Not forged by any smith.
Formed from molten memory.
Hardened by every trial.
And her reflection in the cracked forge wall?
It did not smile.
But it stared back with certainty.
Outside, dawn broke.
Veredon had not known she was gone.
Not entirely.
But they felt her return.
The birds stopped singing.
The guards straightened.
The fire in the palace hearths rose higher.
Because their queen had gone to the flame…
And come back as something else.
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