The fires in Kael'Thar always whispered.
They danced in stone sconces, floated above water bowls in the temple courtyards, and curled along the branches of the sacred trees, casting red-orange light onto bark and bone. For Kaelien, they had once brought clarity—symbols of truth made flame. But now, the whispers felt less like guidance, more like doubt crackling at the edge of every thought.
He stood alone beneath the canopy of the Flame Circle's highest sanctum. The air was dry, suffused with incense and the weight of unspoken history. Before him flickered the Heartfire—ancient, steady, and alive. He had grown up watching it. Listening to it.
Now it felt…silent.
"Report," said Elder Orrun, voice like smoldering coal.
Kaelien recited the facts: anomalies near the Rift, warped magical signatures, residual fire pulses from beneath the earth. Something old stirring. Something wrong. "The magic there isn't ours," he said. "But it isn't Velmoran, either."
"Then what is it?" asked Lysae.
Kaelien hesitated. "A third force. Maybe older than either of us."
A long pause.
"Did you encounter Velmoran scouts?"
"No," Kaelien said. "But there were signs. Fresh disturbances in the frost, old relics disturbed. Someone else was there."
"Then you should have waited for them to return," Vathen said sharply. "And ended them."
Kaelien's shoulders tensed. "We're not executioners."
"You're wrong," Orrun said quietly. "We are survivors. Mercy is a luxury the dead no longer enjoy."
Later, Maeril found him on the temple ramparts, staring toward the horizon. The Rift was just barely visible—like a scar against the sky.
"You hesitated," she said.
"I didn't even see them," he replied. "But I knew. I felt them, somewhere near. And I still… did nothing."
"That is hesitation."
Kaelien clenched his jaw. "They didn't pose a threat."
"You don't know that," she said gently. "And if you wait until you do… it may be too late."
He turned sharply. "So what, then? We kill shadows? Attack every flicker of frost or footfall that doesn't wear our colors?"
Maeril said nothing for a moment, then: "We don't hunt them because we hate them. We do it because they won't stop. And neither can we."
He tried to sleep that night, but dreams came instead.
The Rift—glowing with stormlight, deeper than any chasm should be. Magic leaking out like blood. Visions of bone towers and serpentine shapes coiled in fire. And always, the presence of someone watching—not hostile, but resolute.
A shadow in silver and blue. He never saw a face.
But he woke with a single, painful truth:
Next time, he could not hesitate.
The next day, the Circle gave him new orders: return to the borderlands and take command of the western scouts. Watch the Rift. Report anomalies. Eliminate any Velmoran presence.
Kaelien accepted without expression.
He packed his weapons. Tuned his flame-sap arrows. Lit a single votive candle in the Grove of Whispers and whispered an old prayer not for peace—but for clarity.
He would not let doubt cloud his purpose again.
As he walked into the wilds, the fire at his back flared once—then faded.