You do not teach war.
You awaken it.
You do not shape fire.
You surrender to it.
The sun did not rise the next morning — not fully.
Clouds rolled in from the north, thick and grey, casting Elderglen in a cold, aching half-light.
The Hollow Flame roused themselves slowly, most of them bleary-eyed and heavy with unease. No one had slept well. Even the forest had been restless — as if it too was watching the fire last night, wondering what had returned.
Seraphine stood at the center of the clearing, motionless, as if she'd been carved from the same stone as the ruined temples.
Captain Halric approached her with a practiced frown.
"You plan on standing there forever?"
She didn't answer.
Instead, she turned toward the rebels who had begun to gather — wary, curious, skeptical.
"Pick up your blades," she said, her voice calm and hollow. "You say you want to fight. Show me how."
They hesitated.
Even Halric.
Then Renna, the scout, stepped forward.
"I'll spar."
Seraphine nodded once. "Begin."
Renna drew twin daggers — fast, light, fluid. She danced across the clearing with the grace of a wolf, trying to find an opening.
But Seraphine didn't move.
Not even a breath.
Renna circled, feinting left, then lunged forward — her dagger flashing for the ribs.
And then—
In a blur of motion too fast for any to follow, Seraphine stepped inside the strike, twisted Renna's wrist, and sent her tumbling to the ground with a soundless thud.
Renna gasped, eyes wide.
Seraphine had never drawn her sword.
"You move with fear," Seraphine said, standing over her. "Speed without resolve is nothing. Precision without belief is dust."
One by one, the rebels challenged her.
Swordsmen. Archers. An old man with a war hammer who once fought in the Battle of Blackhill.
None of them lasted more than a few heartbeats.
She never raised her blade.
Never struck to harm.
But each defeat was complete.
And by midday, none dared question her presence.
They gathered again near the fire.
This time, in silence.
Not out of fear — but reverence.
Seraphine stood before them, her hands clasped behind her back.
"You think fire is fury," she said. "It isn't. It's hunger. It's patience. It's the breath between destruction and rebirth."
She looked out across the camp.
"You've all lived in the shadow of kings. You've been taught to survive. To obey. To kneel." Her voice darkened. "But the world that is coming… it won't care how loyal you were. Or how long you endured."
She took a step forward.
"You will either become the fire — or be burned by it."
That night, the Hollow Flame did not drink.
They did not boast or curse or bicker.
They trained.
Even the old.
Even the weak.
Because they had seen something in her — something that made their bones remember a time before fear. Before defeat.
Seraphine stood alone at the edge of the trees, staring into the dark.
Far beyond the forest, she could sense it — like a current pulling at her thoughts.
Ash,
He was alive.
But something clung to him now… something vast, unseen, and wrong.
She closed her eyes.
In the silence, her heart burned once.
Not with rage.
Not with love.
But with fate.
"I will reach you, Ash," she whispered.
"Before the throne does."
And high above them all, past the clouds and the wind and the sky, a single raven turned its wings eastward — toward the crownless city.
Its eyes burned gold.
And its cry, unheard by any man, split the night like prophecy.