CHAPTER XIII
The Realm Where Fire Remembers
The Gate of Cinders closed behind them without sound, yet its passing was felt like the sealing of a tomb. The air of the Realm of Cinders was heavy and dry, tasting of ash and ancient smoke, and each breath seemed to draw warmth directly into the lungs, as though the world itself exhaled embers.
The sky was a vault of dark crimson and bruised violet, veiled by slow-moving clouds that glowed faintly from within, lit by fires no sun could claim. There was light, but no true day; a perpetual twilight ruled this land, born of flame and shadow rather than star and sky.
They stood upon a plain of black glass and cinder, their reflections distorted beneath their feet. In the distance rose the Cinder-Spine, a chain of mountains whose peaks smoldered like banked coals. At its heart loomed a single, towering volcano, its crown wreathed in slow, spiraling smoke that glimmered with threads of gold and scarlet.
"There," Lysa said, her voice hushed with awe. "The Pyre of Ages. If the Crown of Ash lies anywhere in this realm, it will be in the shadow of that fire."
Edrin's face was drawn, the heat already taxing his recovering strength, but his eyes were alight with the fierce resolve that had carried him through countless battles and long, lonely watches. "Then we do not linger," he said. "This land is no friend to mortal flesh."
As they began their journey across the cinder plains, Alaric felt the strange duality within him sharpen. The First Flame in his blood resonated with the realm's heat, offering a measure of protection, while the Oath of Balance, sworn beneath ice and star, anchored him against the land's consuming will. It was as if fire and frost warred within him, yet neither was allowed to dominate.
Not so for the world around them.
The ground cracked and shifted beneath their steps, vents of hot gas sighing open and shut like the breathing of some buried giant. From time to time, flickers of light moved in the distance—shapes that might have been spirits of flame, or memories given form by the realm's lingering magic.
On the second day, they encountered the first of the realm's guardians.
It rose from the glassy plain without warning, a towering figure of obsidian and living fire, its form vaguely draconic yet twisted, as though shaped by half-remembered fear. Its eyes burned like molten gold, and its voice, when it spoke, was the grinding of stone within a furnace.
Blood of Covenant, it intoned. Why do you walk the paths of broken flame?
Alaric stepped forward, the mark upon his chest glowing softly. "I seek the Crown of Ash," he said. "Not for dominion, but to uphold the ancient law that binds fire to the world it would otherwise destroy."
The guardian regarded him in silence, then inclined its massive head. The Crown judges all who seek it. Many have come with words of balance upon their tongues and hunger in their hearts. Few have returned. Fewer still unchanged.
It stepped aside, its fiery form dissolving back into the glass and cinder. The path is open. The trial awaits.
Beyond the place where the guardian had stood, the plain gave way to a canyon whose walls glowed with veins of molten stone. A narrow bridge of blackened rock spanned its depths, leading toward the distant, burning mountain.
As they crossed, Alaric felt the weight of unseen eyes upon him. The realm itself seemed to watch, to remember.
That night, they made camp in the lee of a great slab of obsidian that shielded them from the worst of the heat. As Lysa tended Edrin and set wards of cooling and protection, Alaric sat alone, gazing toward the Pyre of Ages.
The Crown of Ash was no longer a mere legend to him. It was a presence, a silent pull in the fabric of the world, drawing him onward with the promise of revelation and the threat of ruin.
In the flickering light of distant fire, he thought he saw, high upon the slopes of the burning mountain, a vast silhouette stir and unfurl its wings.
Whether it was a dragon of flesh and scale, or only a memory of one, he could not yet tell.
But the Realm of Cinders had begun to awaken to his presence.
And the trials of flame, long waiting for a bearer of the Covenant, were drawing near.