The mountains parted like jagged teeth, revealing a wasteland draped in soot. Elira stood at the edge of the Vale of Ash, her cloak fluttering in a wind that carried whispers — voices too faint to understand but too persistent to ignore.
Where the forest had been cold, the Vale was colder still, not in temperature but in presence. It was a place memory had forsaken.
She stepped onto the ashen path, each footprint vanishing moments after she made it. Skeletal trees lined the way, petrified and blackened, their branches reaching out like pleading arms. The book pulsed quietly against her side.
> "The flame remembers," she whispered to herself. "Even when the world does not."
Hours passed — or maybe days. Time was meaningless here.
At the heart of the Vale, she found the ruin: the Temple of Embers. Its spires had long collapsed, and its walls were split by ancient forces, but a faint light still flickered within. She stepped through the threshold, the air thick with silence.
Inside, the stone floor was covered in a spiral of runes — the same language from the book, glowing faintly beneath centuries of dust.
At the center of the spiral stood a pedestal, and on it, an ember — small, red, and alive.
She reached toward it.
A sudden wind howled through the temple. From the shadows, they emerged — cloaked figures, faces obscured, each bearing the same mark: the scorched sigil of the Shadow Pact.
> "The heir awakens," one rasped.
> "But the flame belongs to us now," said another.
They raised their hands, and tendrils of darkness lashed toward Elira. She threw the book open — light erupted, forming a shield of glowing runes around her. The shadows shrieked and recoiled.
> "You are not ready," a voice boomed from within the ember itself. "But you must choose."
> "Choose what?" she cried.
> "Ignite… or be extinguished."
The ember leapt into her chest. She screamed, light and fire surging through her veins. The shadows fled. The temple cracked.
And then everything went still.
Elira collapsed to her knees, panting, smoking, alive.
The book closed itself. The spiral faded.
The Vale had accepted her.
But what lay beyond the ash... was darker still.
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