The air in Nytheril had a strange weight to it—like breathing through history.
Kaelen stood in the courtyard's center, surrounded by fractured marble columns and overgrown glyphs. A ring of broken statues watched silently. The training circle, Lirael called it.
He wiped sweat from his brow.
Nothing.
No flame. No light. No silver shimmer beneath his skin.
Just silence.
Lirael stood at the edge of the ring, arms folded. "Again."
Kaelen exhaled and closed his eyes. He tried to find that warm hum from before—the flicker in his chest that had felt like power, like purpose. He reached down, into the place she told him to look.
Still nothing.
His hands remained ordinary. No glow. No spark. Not even warmth.
"I don't get it," he muttered. "Yesterday, it worked. I felt it. I *saw* it."
Lirael approached, calm as always. "You weren't trying then. That's why it came."
"So I'm supposed to *not try*? This is ridiculous."
"You're not broken, Kaelen. You're blocked. Your flame isn't like casting a spell. It's not a trick. It's *will*."
He turned away, fists clenched. "Yeah, well, my will feels pretty damn useless right now."
There was silence between them. The statues seemed to lean closer.
Then Lirael stepped forward and said, more gently, "You're fighting yourself."
Kaelen turned back. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Your thread wasn't meant to return. It pulled you back from death. That isn't normal. That kind of resurrection—painful, imperfect—leaves a scar."
He frowned. "A scar on what?"
"On your *soul*, Kaelen. Something inside you is resisting. Holding back the fire."
Kaelen looked at his hands again, willing them to glow.
They stayed dark.
"I don't know what part of me doesn't want this," he whispered.
Lirael hesitated. Then she stepped forward and placed a hand over his chest. "Maybe… it's the part that remembers what the fire did last time."
---
They broke for the day in a shattered garden tangled with vines. Kaelen sat beneath a stone tree, legs stretched out, watching the sun through cracked leaves.
Lirael sat beside him, silent for a while.
"You're not the first to struggle," she said at last. "Even Starsworn didn't awaken all at once. He nearly lost control the first time his flame ignited. Burned half a valley."
Kaelen glanced over. "Comforting."
She offered him a canteen. "Flame is power, yes. But it's also memory. And pain. The more you unlock, the more you inherit."
"I'm already hearing voices," he muttered. "Whispers when I sleep. Shadows in water. I saw a burning battlefield when I closed my eyes last night."
Lirael's gaze sharpened. "That's the memory-fracture."
"So it's not just visions?"
"It's the soulbound's burden. You're *sharing* a thread with a past self. His grief. His rage. His failures. All of it still lives in the weave."
Kaelen looked away. "He was a warrior. A hero. I was… a guy who stocked shelves and worked late shifts. I don't know how to carry this."
"Then stop trying to be him," Lirael said. "You're not Kaelen Starsworn. You're Kaelen Vale. Let him be who he was. Find who *you* are."
He said nothing.
The garden fell quiet, the sound of wind rustling through ivy.
---
Later that night, Kaelen wandered back to the pool of silver leaves. Moonlight shimmered across its surface. This time, he didn't look into it. He sat at the edge, arms resting on his knees.
Behind him, Lirael approached quietly and sat beside him.
"I don't think the fire wants me," he said.
"It doesn't work like that," she replied.
"I keep waiting for something to *click*. For my skin to glow, for a sword of fire to appear in my hand. But all I get is… flickers."
"That's more than most."
He turned to her. "What if I'm not enough?"
Lirael met his gaze, softer than usual. "Then we'll find another way. The flame is not your only strength."
They sat in silence.
Then Kaelen looked down at his wrist. The silver thread glimmered faintly beneath his skin—but dimmer than before.
"I think I was wrong," he whispered. "Coming back might've been a mistake."
Lirael didn't reply right away.
Then she said, very quietly, "I don't think it was."
Their eyes met.
And for a moment, the thread pulsed between them—two lives, two flames, one bond not yet fully formed.