There comes a point in every great fire
when it no longer needs fuel.
When it no longer burns to survive.
When it simply wants to consume.
Seraphina was there now.
Three days passed since Lucien walked away.
He hadn't returned.
No letters. No scouts. No signs of retreat.
Her court was split.
Her people uncertain.
Her crown heavier than ever.
And she sat upon the throne like a goddess carved of molten stone—watching the fire die inside her without making a sound.
Velis entered quietly.
"He's at Frostgate," he said. "They're gathering their full force."
"How many?" she asked.
"More than ten thousand."
"And us?"
"Five."
Seraphina closed her eyes.
Five thousand against ten.
And one heart still bleeding in the middle.
That night, Nyxara stood at the balcony, arms crossed.
"You have to stop waiting for him to come back."
Seraphina didn't look up.
"I'm not."
"You are."
Silence.
Then Seraphina said, "Why didn't the Circle kill you?"
Nyxara blinked, caught off guard.
"I was their symbol. Their weapon."
"No," Seraphina said. "You were their warning."
Nyxara finally nodded. "Because I showed them what they were afraid you'd become."
Seraphina rose. Walked to her.
"And what is that?"
Nyxara whispered, "The Flame that remembers love but no longer needs it."
Velis brought news the next morning.
Lucien had sent a blade.
Not a messenger.
Not an olive branch.
A dagger wrapped in velvet—the same blade Seraphina once gave him when they first met.
Etched on the handle, the old oath: "Strike only to protect."
Now returned as a threat.
She held it in her hands. Unwrapped it slowly.
And wept.
Not for him.
But for the girl she had been when she gave it.
In the Hall of Flame, Seraphina entered the oldest chamber in her castle.
It was a place she hadn't stepped foot in since her coronation.
The Flamefont.
Where all Flameborn queens were bound to their lineage.
Where her blood could be sacrificed to awaken the ancestral fire in her bones—fully.
Velis stopped her at the door.
"If you do this… there's no going back."
"I don't want to go back," she said.
"You'll burn hotter than any queen before you. But it will change you."
She looked him in the eye.
"It already has."
She stood over the flame basin and pressed the dagger to her palm.
Her blood hit the fire.
The chamber screamed.
The flames turned from gold to white. Then to violet. Then to black.
And from the fire rose visions.
Of the first queens. Of Nyxara. Of herself.
Of Lucien.
Of what she might become.
Fire without warmth.
Flame without mercy.
She fell to her knees.
And the fire entered her.
Not gently.
But like a storm finding its home.
When she emerged, her body glowed with something deeper than fire.
It was old.
Primordial.
Her skin shimmered with faint markings now—runes burned beneath the surface.
Her eyes flickered with obsidian sparks.
Even Nyxara took a step back.
"What have you done?" she asked.
Seraphina's voice echoed, layered with a hundred voices of queens before her.
"I have become what they feared."
And she smiled.
Not with cruelty.
But with clarity.
Three nights later, the army marched.
Velis at her left.
Mirell at her right.
Nyxara in the shadows, grinning.
The Flameborn had not gone to war in over two hundred years.
But now they marched not as defenders—
They marched as fire incarnate.
And at their head walked a queen whose fire no longer asked for permission.
Lucien stood atop the Frostgate tower as her banners appeared on the horizon.
The people around him were quiet.
He couldn't breathe.
He didn't need scouts to tell him who led that army.
He could feel her flame.
Could feel her sorrow.
And he knew—
He had broken something that might never be whole again.
Lucien stood atop the Frostgate tower as her banners appeared on the horizon.
The people around him were quiet.
He couldn't breathe.
He didn't need scouts to tell him who led that army.
He could feel her flame.
Could feel her sorrow.
And he knew—
He had broken something that might never be whole again.
The world waited for fire.
And it would get it.
But in the heart of the storm, only one question remained:
When love and flame both fail you…
What burns last?