🜂 Return to Valecrown
Valecrown had changed.
Not in appearance—its towers still pierced the sky like broken spears, its bridges hung like ribs over the ash-choked valley. But something deeper had shifted.
Jackie felt it the moment they crossed the outer ward.
> The city remembers fire.
Once the capital of Flameborne memory, Valecrown now teetered between ruin and resurrection. Its people lived in shadow, fearful of the past but desperate for something more than survival.
And someone had been waiting.
---
🜂 The Ember Court
They entered the citadel through forgotten tunnels, paths once carved by resistance leaders during the Warden purges. The throne room still stood, half-collapsed, vines growing through cracks in the obsidian.
A circle of figures waited inside.
Not soldiers.
Not politicians.
Flamebound.
Old and young. Scarred and silent. The ones who had survived in hiding. Who had remembered.
At their center stood an elder woman with ash-gray braids, molten rings embedded in her palms.
"Jackie Emberlane," she said, voice thick with emotion. "You brought the fire back."
Jackie stepped forward and held out the Emberseed vial.
"No," she replied. "We did."
---
🜂 The Trial of Cinders
To claim the Crown of Cinders—the symbolic rite of leadership once reserved for Flameborne sovereigns—Jackie had to undergo the Trial.
Not a duel.
Not a sacrifice.
> A memory.
She entered the Pyrewell, an ancient chamber deep beneath Valecrown where all past Flamebound leaders had burned a part of themselves to forge unity with the Flamecore.
There, the flame didn't test strength.
It tested truth.
Visions struck her—Jazira's final moments, the purge of the archives, dragons dying with names on their tongues, her own mother whispering: "Hide who you are, or they'll burn it out of you."
Jackie stood in the center of the Pyrewell, arms open.
"I won't hide anymore."
The fire took—scorching her veins, reading every lie, every fear.
Then it gave back.
When she emerged, her eyes were no longer entirely her own.
They burned.
---
🜂 The New Flameborne Pact
With the Crown of Cinders—an ancient circlet of scorched metal and living ember—now resting lightly on her brow, Jackie stood before the Ember Court.
She held out the map, its paths now rewritten.
"This is no longer a charter of war," she declared.
"This is a map of restoration. Emberseed belongs not just to us—but to any willing to carry the fire. Not by blood. Not by force. But by choice."
Silence followed.
Then one by one, the Flamebound knelt—not in obedience, but in alliance.
And from somewhere high above, the old bells of Valecrown rang for the first time in a generation.
---
🜂 Fire Spreads
News traveled fast.
Outposts once loyal to the Wardens flickered into uncertainty. Skyships of broken nations rerouted toward Valecrown. The remnants of dragonkind stirred in hidden valleys.
Emberseed had awakened more than memory.
It had reawakened possibility.
And far to the south, in a mirror-black fortress still loyal to the old order, a figure watched the firelight from a crystal array.
A Warden Prime, still alive.
> "So… the spark survived."
He smiled.
> "Good."
Then he turned toward his own vault, one that had never stopped burning.
Labeled:
> Project Ironseed.