The path beneath Varn was older than any map.
It wasn't lit by torches — the flame in these tunnels came from the stone itself, glowing faintly with old fire that remembered a time before names. Ming walked first, her steps silent, her thoughts not.
Taren followed. He said nothing, but his eyes never left her back.
They passed statues carved from obsidian — warriors with hollow eyes, flame sigils carved into their chests, each standing in silence like guardians. None of them were named. None of them were smiling.
Ming didn't need a torch. The fire in her veins lit the path better than any flame.
"They'll be searching," Taren said finally.
"They already are," Ming replied.
"They'll block the gates. Track your mark. They might send a Flamecaller."
She didn't answer.
Because she felt it, too — the hunt had already begun.
She stopped at a stone wall etched with spiral marks. Her hand hovered over one rune. The flame in her forehead pulsed once. The wall cracked open.
They stepped through.
The chamber beyond was circular, hollow, and warm — not by design, but memory. The place had burned once, long ago, and the heat still lingered.
She sat.
So did Taren.
"You're not like them," he said. "Not like the instructors. Or the Elders. Not even the ones they whisper about."
She met his eyes. "What do they whisper?"
"That there was once a flame that didn't belong to the Sect. One that burned higher. Brighter. That it chose someone once… and that person lost everything."
She leaned back against the wall.
"I didn't choose this," she said.
"No," he agreed. "But it chose you."
The silence that followed wasn't awkward.
It was waiting.
Then it came.
Not a knock. Not a sound.
A shift.
Ming's eyes snapped open.
So did Taren's.
They felt it at the same time — pressure. Heat. Not like the second flame. Not like Bo. Something colder. Sharper. Human.
She stood just before the sound arrived.
Footsteps.
Slow. Purposeful.
Then a voice.
"So this is what the Trial produces now?"
A figure stepped into the light.
She wasn't tall. She wasn't loud.
But the flame behind her bent sideways when she entered.
Her robe was black. No sigils. No title.
Just one thing marked her: her eyes. They glowed with a kind of heat that wasn't fire — it was certainty.
"Who are you?" Taren asked, hand already moving toward his belt.
She didn't even look at him.
She spoke only to Ming.
"You're the one the fire talks to. The one who didn't break."
"I don't know what you think I am," Ming said calmly.
"I know exactly what you are," the woman replied. "You're what they buried and failed to kill."
Ming's mark flared.
The woman smiled.
"I've seen that before," she said. "A long time ago. On someone whose name they erased."
Then she struck.
No warning. Just flame.
Black fire — wrong, sharp, unnatural — burst from her hand and curved through the air like a whip.
Ming moved too late.
But the fire didn't hit her.
It stopped.
Hung there.
Sizzling in place.
Between them.
Ming's hand was up.
She hadn't raised it.
The flame had.
Taren stared, frozen.
The black fire writhed.
Then turned.
Snapped back toward its master.
She dispelled it with a flick.
"You're not ready," the woman said. "But soon, you will be. And when you are, the Sect won't be your only problem."
She vanished in heat. Not walked. Vanished.
Taren exhaled like he'd been drowning.
Ming just stood there.
Her hands trembling.
Not from fear.
From energy.
From the flame.
Later, as they moved deeper into the tunnels, Taren broke the silence.
"Who was she?"
"A warning," Ming said.
He swallowed. "How do you fight something like that?"
Ming looked ahead.
"I don't think you do. I think you survive long enough to become something worse."
They camped that night in a hollowed stone cavity just beneath the western cliffs. The air smelled like salt and ash. A fire burned between them — real, small, controllable.
But she didn't trust it.
And for the first time, Taren asked what he hadn't dared before.
"Do you know what Bo really is?"
She didn't answer for a while.
Then said, "Not yet."
"Do you think it's a person?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"A memory," she said. "A promise the flame made a long time ago. And it never got to keep it."
He said nothing after that.
But he didn't sleep.
And neither did she.
When morning came, she awoke to a sound that didn't belong underground.
Voices.
Too many.
She stood.
So did Taren.
Above them, just through the stone vents, the sky roared.
Flamecallers.
Three.
Descending.
The Sect had sent a kill team.
They weren't trying to bring her back.
They were trying to erase her.
Ming stepped into the light.
Taren tried to grab her wrist.
"Don't."
"You can't fight them—"
"I'm not fighting."
"Then what are you—?"
She looked back.
"I'm remembering."
And the flame inside her opened its eyes.