PART 1: THE THRONE OF EMBERS
The air in the reborn Pyre Temple thrummed with power, vibrating against Aric's skin like the plucked string of some colossal instrument. The child—no, the god—perched on her throne of living embers, her gold-veined eyes tracking their every breath.
Lysara moved first, her scarred hands flashing:
"You lied."
The god-child tilted her head, flames curling like hair around her face. "I changed," she corrected. "Just as you did when you took these." Her small hand gestured to Lysara's throat, where the scars now pulsed with new patterns—LOYALTY melting into LIBERATION.
Aric stepped forward, his boots sinking slightly into the temple's warm stone. "Why bring us here?"
The throne's embers flared.
"To offer what was always yours."
The walls dissolved, revealing an endless corridor of doors—each a different material (bone, obsidian, singing metal), each etched with names Aric half-remembered:
- The Hollow King's Last Walk
- Lysara's First Drowning
- The Day the Pyre Wept
Grandmother Ash groaned, clutching her staff. "She's showing you the Branching Paths. Every choice that ever mattered."
The god-child smiled. "And one that still does."
A door unlike the others materialized—its surface made of living skin, its handle a human fingerbone. The name carved there stopped Aric's heart:
The Last Emberborn's Sacrifice
PART 2: THE COST OF MEMORY
Lysara reached the door first.
The moment her scars touched it, the temple screamed.
Memory Flood: The First Cycle
Lysara stands knee-deep in the Black Lake, holding a squirming bundle—the child, but newborn, her eyes still mortal blue. The frost-woman (her mother?) extends clawed hands. "Give her," she demands. Lysara hesitates. The child wails. Somewhere, Aric (but not Aric, an Aric with Hollow King's eyes) shouts her name—
Aric wrenched her back. The vision shattered, but the door's surface now showed their reflections—not as they were, but as they could be:
- Aric clad in molten gold, a crown of screaming faces upon his brow
- Lysara with unmarked skin, her hands clean of fire and blood
- The god-child as a true infant, wailing in a crib
"A reset," Grandmother Ash whispered. "She's offering to undo it all."
The god-child extended her hands."Walk through, and the Pyre never was. No scars. No chains. No..." Her eyes flicked to Aric's chest, where his rebirth scar ached. "Hollow Kings."
Lysara's fingers found Aric's.
"Price?" she signed with her free hand.
The temple's light dimmed.
"Me,"said the god-child. "The memory of me. Of all this." She looked down at her ember-throne. "I'll be just a child again. Ordinary. Happy."
Aric's throat tightened. "And you'll never know what you were."
"And you'll never know what you lost," she countered.
Outside the temple, the Guild's empty masks began to rattle.
PART 3: THE GUILD'S TRUE FACE
Kael's voice came first—not from Grandmother Ash's son, but from a thousand gold masks simultaneously:
"We remember what you sacrifice!"
The masks levitated, swarming like wasps to form a colossal face above the temple altar:
The First Pyre God.
Not the kind prisoner from the Maw, but something older, crueler, its features shifting between every Emberborn who'd ever died for it.
Lysara's dagger was in her hand before Aric could blink, but Grandmother Ash grabbed her wrist.
"Fool girl! That's not your enemy!" The old woman pointed to the god-child. "She is! She always has been!"
The accusation hung in the air as the child-god's golden eyes filled with flames.
"Test me," she challenged.
Grandmother Ash spat at the foot of the throne. "You made us think we were breaking chains, but you forged them! Every cycle, every rebirth—all to keep us fighting while you grew stronger!"
The temple shook. The skin-door trembled.
And Aric understood.
The god-child hadn't brought them here to offer freedom.
She'd brought them here to choose her prison.
PART 4: THE CHOICE
The visions came faster now:
1. The child laughing as she played with mortal children in a sunlit field
2. The Pyre God's face screaming behind its mask of gold
3. Lysara whole and unmarked, weaving flowers into Aric's hair
All they had to do was walk through the door.
All they had to do was forget.
Lysara's fingers tightened around Aric's.
"No," she signed.
The god-child went very still.
"Why?"
Lysara touched her scars—LIBERATION now shining brighter than the throne itself.
"Because I earned these."
Aric stepped forward, placing his palm against the door. It burned, but he didn't pull away.
"And I earned my memories."
The god-child's golden eyes dimmed to mortal blue.
"Even the terrible ones?"
Especially those, Aric thought but didn't say.
The temple began to crumble.
-CHAPTER ENDING: THE FIRST DAWN (AGAIN)
They woke—really woke—on the hill overlooking the village.
No temple.
No god-child.
No door.
Only Grandmother Ash's staff lying between them, its carvings now depicting a new story:
Two figures walking away from a pyre, hand in hand.
Lysara touched her throat. The scars remained, but the words had changed once more:
FREEDOM
TRUTH
ARIC
Somewhere in the valley below, a child laughed.
Aric didn't need to look to know her eyes would be ordinary.
Her hair would be brown, not white.
And she would never, ever burn.
—TO BE CONTINUED—