One Month After the Queen's Fall – The Rebuilding of Emberhold
The Hollow Queen was dead. Her armies had vanished with her final scream. Peace, it seemed, was finally possible.
And yet, Ashren couldn't rest.
Not when the flame inside him whispered in a new tongue.
He sat alone in the ruins of the Emberhold temple, staring at the flame orb that once burned at its center. It no longer blazed with rage—it pulsed… softly.
And it spoke.
But not with Vaelira's voice.
Not even Ashrel's.
This was older.
---
The Flame's Secret
Ashren placed his palm against the embers. A voice slid into his mind.
"Blood does not burn without purpose."
Images flashed:
A map—far beyond the Vale, into the Ashlands.
A creature—larger than dragons, eyes like void-stars, skin carved in black glass.
A name, spoken in fire:
"The First Flame has awakened."
Ashren reeled back, panting.
He'd thought Vaelira was the origin.
But she had been a pawn too.
A puppet of the one who made the fire that twisted her.
Something ancient had stirred.
Something watching.
---
Seris's Warning
When Ashren told Seris, she turned pale.
"There are flame-chants… stories the Ember Priests forbade. About a being who bled fire into the world before mortals walked it."
"Was it ever real?"
"No one knows. It was said to slumber beneath the Ashlands, waiting for the fire-born to wake it."
Ashren's voice dropped.
"I think I just did."
---
A New Journey
Ashren called together his most trusted allies: Seris, Caelis, the last surviving Flameguard.
"We destroyed a queen," he said. "But she wasn't the end. Only the beginning."
Seris placed a hand over her heart. "Then we go to the Ashlands."
"A war is coming," Caelis murmured. "Older than kingdoms. Older than even death."
Ashren turned toward the horizon, where the sky burned red not with sunset—but with a call.
"Then let the fire remember who truly commands it."