They led him deeper underground, past the sanctioned halls and sanctuaries, into places the Academy never mentioned in scripture.
The air grew colder. Older. The torches along the walls didn't burn with normal fire — they glowed pale blue, whispering instead of crackling.
Kael's guards stopped at an iron gate inscribed with countless circles and lines — binding sigils that seemed to shift when he blinked. Beyond it, darkness pulsed like something alive.
Seraphine turned to him. "What you saw upstairs — the lectures, the ceremonies — those are for the faithful. But this place… this is for the chosen."
Kael frowned. "Chosen for what?"
"To learn what the Inquisition pretends not to know," she said. "That the fire they worship cannot be contained by prayer."
The gate opened with a sound like steel sighing.
They entered a cavern lined with black stone, veins of molten light running through it like blood beneath skin. At its center stood a circular platform surrounded by shallow channels of liquid fire. The air was thick, humming with power.
Seraphine gestured for him to step onto the platform.
"This is where truth begins," she said softly. "Do not resist it."
Kael hesitated. "And if I do?"
"Then it will break you."
He stepped forward.
The moment his boots touched the stone, the fire in the channels flared, swirling into symbols — ancient ones, older than the Empire's language. They burned not with heat, but memory.
Images struck him — flashes of forgotten cities swallowed by flame, towers of glass collapsing under the weight of light. Voices spoke in languages he didn't understand, all whispering the same name.
His.
Kael staggered, clutching his chest. The mark beneath his skin seared, veins lighting up in red and gold. He saw not himself but another — a figure of ash and glass, crowned in embers, walking through the ruins of a burning sky.
Then it spoke — his voice, yet not his.
"You are not its vessel. You are its echo."
Kael gasped, falling to his knees. "What—what does that mean?"
Seraphine's voice came from somewhere distant, distorted. "You saw it, didn't you? The first fire. The one that birthed both gods and monsters."
He looked up at her, eyes blazing faintly with inner light. "It's alive."
"Yes." She stepped into the glow, her shadow stretching long across the stone. "And it remembers those who once commanded it."
Kael's heart pounded. "You think I'm one of them?"
"I think you're something worse," she said. "A bridge."
The word sank into him like a knife.
The vision began to fade, the light dimming, but the echoes didn't leave. They clung to his mind — the burning cities, the voices, the endless hunger.
When it was over, he collapsed forward, smoke curling from his fingertips.
Seraphine crouched beside him, brushing ash from his sleeve. "Rest, Kael Verrin. You've only touched the first flame. The deeper ones will come for you soon enough."
Her tone wasn't cruel — almost reverent. As if she were speaking not to a student, but to something sacred and dangerous.
Before he lost consciousness, he whispered, "Why are you helping me?"
Seraphine's eyes softened — the first crack in her calm. "Because the Empire burned my brother for carrying the same light."
The chamber faded into black.
⸻
When Kael woke, he was in a stone cell lined with runes. The air shimmered faintly with heat, though no torch burned nearby. His clothes were folded neatly beside the bed, and a single note lay atop them in precise handwriting:
You're been marked by the fire that Dreams. If you wish to survive it, meet me at the Spire of Silence by moonrise.
— S
He read the message twice, then pressed a hand to his chest. The mark pulsed beneath his skin — slower now, but stronger.
It didn't feel like a wound anymore. It felt like a heartbeat that wasn't his own.
Outside his door, bells tolled the evening prayer.
Above them, somewhere high in the spires, the Eternal Flame burned — steady, watching, and waiting.
And Kael realized that for the first time, it wasn't whispering.
It was listening .