The mountains were silent.
Too silent.
Not the silence of peace — but the kind that comes just before memory returns.
They had left Emberlight by the east passage, through the Hollow March, where old roads ran beside rivers that no longer flowed. The air felt thinner here, not just from altitude, but from age.
Lira could feel it pressing on her skin.
The Third Vault was near.
"You sure we're not being followed?" Trellen asked, voice hushed.
"If we are," said Davin, "they're better at hiding than shadows themselves."
"We are being followed," Lira said softly.
"But not by something alive."
They all stopped walking.
"Explain that," Ansha murmured.
Lira turned her head slowly toward the cliffs.
"The flame left something behind," she said. "When it sealed the Third Vault… it left a scar."
"And scars remember."
That night, their campfire didn't catch.
The kindling blackened, but didn't burn.
Trellen tried twice. Davin cursed under his breath.
Then Lira touched the wood herself.
Not with fire. With memory.
And the flame ignited — not orange, but a deep, haunted blue.
The others stepped back.
"What did you just do?" Davin asked.
"I didn't light it," Lira replied. "I reminded it how to burn."
The dream came again.
But it wasn't hers.
She was in a forest of mirrored trees, each reflecting a different face — a girl with frost in her hair, a boy with knives for eyes, a child made of emberdust.
In the center stood a tower with no door.
The ash-child — the one from the Second Vault — waited by its base.
"You'll have to choose soon," he said.
"Not who you fight. Not what you save. But what you're willing to forget."
"What's inside the Third Vault?" she asked.
The ash-child smiled, teeth sharp as cinders.
"The first thing the flame ever feared."
Lira woke before dawn.
The others were still asleep — even Davin, though his hand rested on his blade.
She stood at the edge of camp, watching the sky.
But the stars were wrong.
One constellation was missing: The Watcher's Eye, a fixed star said to mark the center of the gods' gaze.
Gone.
Or maybe… turned away.
By midday, they reached a ridge that overlooked a vast, sunken valley.
It was dead, flat, and utterly silent.
In the center, rising like a shard of glass from the earth, stood a spire of obsidian, etched with flame-runes so ancient even Ansha couldn't read them.
"Is that it?" Trellen asked, shading his eyes.
"That's the seal," said Lira.
"And the Vault?" Davin asked.
Lira's voice dropped to a whisper.
"Beneath."
Suddenly, the wind shifted.
From the far side of the valley, a horn blew.
Deep. Distant.
And unmistakably Kindled.
Ashrel had found them.