The Message
While camping near a half-dormant mana-geyser field, Cael finds a strange phenomenon: his shard reflects a sigil in fire on a nearby stone. It wasn't there before.
Mireth recognizes it instantly.
"Oh no. That's a challenge mark. She's coming."
"She?" Cael asks.
"The Flamebound Sealbearer. She hunts unstable ones like you."
Arrival of the Flamebound
The next evening, they're ambushed—not by monsters, but by precision.
Flame sigils erupt from the earth. Rings of fire corral them. Their gear melts at the edges.
Descending through the smoke: a woman clad in bronze and red battle-silk. Her eyes burn like twin coals. She wields no weapon—only her voice and hands laced in Tier 3 Flame-Essentia seals.
"Cael Adrios. Step away from the shard."
A Duel of Ideals
She introduces herself as Inza Thorne, Flamebound Sealbearer of the Southern Vigil.
She views Cael as a living instability—a time-bomb.
"You do not seal the Fracture. You carry it. That is not salvation. That is sacrilege."
Mireth tries to reason with her. Cael tries to explain his controlled research. Inza listens… and attacks anyway.
Flame vs Void
A fierce battle ignites:
Inza forms runic flame hounds from Essentia glyphs
Cael deflects them using the shard's gravitational distortions
Mireth lays down suppression seals to contain collateral damage
But Cael doesn't try to win. He uses the bone quill in the heat of battle—writing a glyph in mid-air that redirects her flames back at her own glyphs.
She's stunned—not harmed, but outmaneuvered.
"You shouldn't be able to do that. That glyph was mine—my bloodwork."
Cael answers calmly:
"Then your blood speaks a language the shard already knew."
Uneasy Truce
Inza calls off the duel—not because she's convinced, but because she's curious. She agrees to wait and watch. From a distance.
Before leaving, she gives Cael a warning:
"Every time you draw on that shard, it learns. And one day it will stop asking permission."
She vanishes in a flash of heat and cinders, leaving behind a sealed ember-ring—a flameproof mark that will repel lesser anomalies for three days.