The air inside the temple was thick—warm, dry, and humming with an energy that prickled across Mara's skin. The walls were smooth and translucent, pulsing with faint orange veins like molten rivers frozen mid-flow. She took each step carefully, feeling as if the ground were watching her.
The crystal around her neck glowed brighter than ever. It tugged toward the center of the temple, toward a chamber that radiated both power and danger.
She entered.
The room was circular, lit from no visible source. In the center, suspended in the air, was a heart-shaped fragment of crystal, larger than hers and burning from within with an intense ember glow. It didn't hang from anything. It hovered—alive, aware, ancient.
Her smaller shard responded instantly. It lifted from her chest and spun toward the larger one, drawn like a drop of water to the sea. As they neared each other, a deep tremor passed through the floor, and the glowing runes along the walls lit in sequence—one after another, in a language she didn't know but somehow understood.
"Fire remembers. Blood restores. Silence breaks."
A voice—not spoken, but felt—resonated within her mind:
"Heir of Ash. Bearer of the last ember. You have come to awaken what was sealed."
Mara dropped to her knees as visions tore through her mind—
Flames consuming cities. Shadows rising from the earth. A woman—her mother—fighting to seal the Heart, bleeding into the fire to bind it.
And herself… as a child… cradled by ash-stained hands and hidden from sight.
She gasped for air, the weight of it all threatening to crush her.
"You are the flame reborn," said a voice behind her.
She turned.
The Ashborn woman from before stood at the chamber's edge, her eyes glowing brighter now. "The Ember Sky burns because the Heart is waking. And only one of its blood can wield it… or stop it."
Mara looked back at the Heart.
"I don't know how."
"You will," the woman replied. "But first, you must choose: bind the flame—or become it."
The ember shard now floated between her palms. Waiting.
The sky outside roared with distant thunder.
The choice would change everything.
---