PART 1: THE CHILD WHO WASN'T THERE
The girl didn't breathe.
Aric realized it three days after they escaped the Maw—three days of carrying her limp form through the wastes, three nights of Lysara's silent vigil, her fingers tracing the child's too-perfect face. The girl's chest never rose. Her lips never parted. And yet...
She lived.
Her white eyes tracked the flight of crows. Her fingers twitched when thunder rolled. And sometimes—only sometimes—she smiled.
But she never spoke.
Until the fifth night.
Until the dead came back.
PART 2: THE GUILD'S RETURN
The first sign was the smell.
Rotting silk.
Aric woke to it—thick and cloying, clinging to the back of his throat. The fire had burned low, its embers painting the campsite in bloody light. Lysara was gone. The child was gone.
And the Guild woman stood over him, her throat still slit, her gold mask gleaming.
"You shouldn't have taken her," she whispered.
Aric lunged for his dagger— and froze.
Because the child stood behind the corpse, one small hand pressed to its back.
And where her fingers touched, the Guild woman's wound "stitched itself shut".
"No," the girl said.
The corpse screamed.
Then it "unmade" itself, flesh peeling away like parchment in flame, until only the mask remained. It clattered to the ground, its surface cracked.
The child picked it up.
"Mine," she declared.
And the mask "obeyed".
PART 3: THE CORPSE KING'S WARNING
Kael's dust had blown away, but his voice hadn't.
It came at dawn, carried on the wind, whispering from the cracks in the Guild mask:
She is the Pyre's last spark. The Hollow King's first breath. And if you keep her, they will come. All of them.
Lysara shattered the mask with one blow.
But the words lingered.
Just like the footsteps Aric heard that night—hundreds of them, marching in perfect unison.
Just like the shadows that didn't match the trees.
Just like the scent of molten gold.
The Guild wasn't just back.
It was "hungry".
PART 4: THE CITY OF THE DEAD
They found shelter in a ruin older than the Ashen District—a place of black stone and broken pillars, where the air tasted of old blood and older magic. The child led them there, her small hand tugging Aric's sleeve, her eyes fixed on something only she could see.
The moment they crossed the threshold, the world "shifted".
The ruins became whole. The dead walked.
And they "remembered".
"Emberborn," a soldier murmured, touching his rusted helm. "You've come home."
Lysara's dagger was out in an instant. "This isn't our home."
The soldier laughed. "Isn't it?"
Then he lifted his visor.
And Aric saw his own face beneath it.
PART 5: THE WHITE FIRE
The child screamed.
Not in fear. In "fury".
White fire erupted from her tiny hands, scouring the soldier from existence. The other dead recoiled, their forms flickering like candle flames in a storm.
"No more lies," the girl hissed.
The city shuddered.
And the truth came crashing down.
This wasn't a ruin.
It was a "tomb".
Their tomb.
Aric's. Lysara's.
Every Emberborn who had ever lived and died, buried here by the Pyre's will, their memories twisted into this grotesque mockery of life.
And the child?
She was the key.
The lock.
And the "warden".
CHAPTER ENDING: THE FIRST AND LAST
The girl stood amidst the ashes of the dead, her white eyes reflecting a thousand fallen sparks.
"I remember now," she whispered.
Then she turned to Aric.
And spoke with the Pyre God's voice:
"YOU WERE NEVER SUPPOSED TO WAKE UP."
—TO BE CONTINUED—