The Chamber of Embers lay in a hush of stone and smoke. The flames that usually danced with joy around the perimeter were strangely still, their light pulsing slow and dim, as if the fire itself were holding its breath.
Mira stood in the center, her spine straight but her fingers twitching. The words of the High Flamekeeper echoed in her skull: "We believe she is carrying one soul... and hosting another."
She could hear Kael's pulse in her body. She'd grown attuned to him, the flutters of life, the sudden surges of warmth when she sang to him, and the calm stillness when Jaxon rested his palm against her belly. But this—this new pulse was wrong. Ancient. Alien. It trembled like a suppressed scream.
Jaxon approached her slowly after the scroll had been dismissed and the sages had retreated to consult the Elder Glyphs. For once, he didn't say anything immediately. He simply knelt before her, one hand against her belly, the other gently holding her fingers.
"Talk to me," he said.
Mira let out a sound that was half a laugh and half a broken sigh. "You heard them. I'm apparently a glorified haunted house."
Jaxon looked up, his expression serious. "You're not. You're the crown of fire. And whatever this second heartbeat is, it has no claim to you unless you give it permission."
She didn't speak for a while. Her eyes drifted to the embers. "Do you ever wonder if... we rushed this? The ritual. The alliance. Kael. Everything."
Jaxon stood. "Every day. And I still wouldn't change a second of it."
She smirked faintly. "Except maybe the part where I passed out and woke up with molten hair."
"That part was terrifying, yes," Jaxon said. "But also kind of hot."
She elbowed him lightly, grateful for the levity.
"There's more going on," she whispered. "I had a vision. A cradle of white fire. A name—Vairn."
Jaxon's jaw clenched. "You saw it too."
Mira looked at him sharply. "Wait. What do you mean, too?"
He hesitated. Then slowly, he reached into the inside of his robe and pulled out a tiny obsidian shard. It glowed faintly violet.
"I found this in the ruins outside the Inbetween. Same cradle. Same sigil. Same voice."
Mira's eyes widened. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I thought it was just a hallucination. Until today."
The shard pulsed once in his palm. Then again.
And then Mira screamed.
Not in pain. But in recognition.
Flames exploded around her body as if she were shedding a skin. Her hair lifted, her eyes glowing like twin furnaces. Jaxon barely had time to shield himself before the energy engulfed the room.
"GET BACK!" she roared, but the voice that emerged was dual-toned—her own, and something deeper. Something layered with dust and storm.
Jaxon didn't retreat. He stepped into the fire.
"You're not alone, Mira. I'm here. Fight it."
The walls shook. The Chamber of Embers fractured in five directions, and one of the ancient flame mirrors cracked clean in two.
Mira fell to her knees.
And then—out of her mouth, in a voice not hers:
"You should not have woken me, child of Pyranthos. The ash remembers. And the fire is tired of serving."
Silence.
Then Mira collapsed.
Jaxon caught her.
She was trembling, unconscious. And on her back, across her spine, glowing briefly before fading—a sigil in the shape of a crown wrapped in smoke.
"Vairn," Jaxon whispered.
And the emberlight shuddered in response.