Chapter 90 – Ashes of the First Flame
They reached Morvale by the fifth morning, cold and wearied by the long ride. The path through the outer marshes had slowed them, and frost still clung to the manes of their horses. Where once smoke and song rose from Morvale's rooftops, now only a whisper of ash remained. Once a cradle of thought and resistance, now a husk—emptied by fear, stalked by silence. Even the birds had abandoned it. The wind howled through empty streets, and doors hung open like mouths frozen mid-scream.
At the city's edge stood what remained of its gate. The great statues that once ringed its entrance—effigies of philosophers, rebels, and the first founders—were gone, torn down. In their place stood stakes, each impaled with a single mask: the helms of the old Order. Split, scorched, and staring with hollow sockets.
Tarn spat into the dirt. "This is no town. This is a tomb."
Lysa walked ahead first, blade drawn—not for threat, but ritual. Her steps were deliberate. Measured. As if calling something back from the dust. She did not speak, but each footfall echoed like a heartbeat returned to the city's bones. The silence pressed down on them, thick with the memory of what once was.
Caedren said nothing. But his eyes found the cracked paving stones beneath his feet—the stones that Ivan had once walked.
"Ivan once stood here," he whispered. "And he wept."
They took refuge in the hollow remains of the Archive Tower, its spine cracked and windows gaping to the sky. Its books had been burned decades ago—fuel for some purge Caedren couldn't remember, some fire stoked by frightened men in noble robes. But in the cellars beneath, knowledge remained hidden in flesh, not parchment.
A single door still stood intact beneath the Archive. They descended in darkness, torchlight throwing long shadows against arched stone. And there, wrapped in furs and silence, sat an old man—white-bearded, blind in one eye. His skin was drawn taut across his bones, and yet his presence filled the chamber.
He called himself Eddric. The last of the "Flamebearers."
"We were the memory of Ivan's defeat," he said. "Not to Kael—but to truth. We bore his regrets forward. And you, boy... you wear his echo in your blood."
Caedren sat with him in the dark, on stone chilled by the weight of history.
"What regrets?" he asked. "Ivan built peace."
Eddric shook his head slowly. "Ivan buried war. He did not kill it."
In that dim undercroft, Eddric showed them a fragment—metal, ancient, scorched, cradled in a cloth of old blue and silver. The haft of the First Flameblade. Once wielded by Kael. Broken by Ivan. Forgotten by time.
Caedren took it in his hands. The metal was warm—not with heat, but with something older.
It pulsed. Not with flame—but with memory.
And for a flicker of heartbeats, Caedren saw—visions not his own.
Kael in black fire, standing before a boy not yet Caedren, not yet born. Ivan kneeling in defeat, offering his students not vengeance but hope. The roots of the world-tree bleeding in silence. A woman's voice—Lysa's?—whispering: "Break the line, or be broken by it."
Caedren dropped the relic. It clanged against the stone floor, and the pulse vanished.
Later that night, Tarn found him by the ashes of the tower's old hearth, long cold but now glowing faintly with embers they had coaxed from dry kindling.
"You saw something," Tarn said. "I've known you long enough to know your silence screams."
Caedren nodded. His voice was quiet, like wind through dying grass.
"They were never enemies, Tarn. Kael and Ivan. Not truly."
"Then what were they?"
"Two sides of the same fall. Two men trying to save a world that refused to be saved the same way."
Meanwhile, Lysa wandered the catacombs alone. Her torch flickered against stone etched with names—names of the fallen, names of the forgotten. She passed crypts with symbols of old orders and carved oaths, remnants of those who had once carried Ivan's fire.
She found her name etched on a wall. Not by her hand—but carved by a survivor.
It read:
LYSA DRAEDEN – Blade of Irelyn – Chosen of the Severed Crown.
Her breath caught.
There was no title she feared more.
The Severed Crown—once a cult, once a movement, now a whispered myth. To be called its chosen was to be marked by blood and fire.
She stepped back. Her torch dipped, and the shadows danced.
And behind her, in the silence, she heard steps. Bare. Careful. Deliberate.
She turned, blade in hand.
But no one stood there.
Only her reflection—in a broken mirror.
And in the glass, her eyes were not her own.
Above ground, smoke bloomed on the horizon—black and rising like a wound against the dawn.
Tarn, scouting from the bell tower, cursed.
"Cireth's men," he said. "A full phalanx. Ten miles off. Too many to face alone."
Caedren stood without hesitation. He strapped on his gear, cinched his cloak.
"We ride before they reach the town. We'll not be caged in ruins."
But Eddric held up a hand. His voice cracked like old wood.
"You must not. There is someone else you must meet. One last of Ivan's kin. Hidden in the Shattered Spire."
"Who?"
"His name was lost. But we called him The Hollow Son. He knew Ivan better than any alive. He carries the final truth."
Caedren paused. He looked to Lysa.
She nodded once. Her face was unreadable, but her voice was steel.
"No thrones in fire," she said.
And they rode again—toward the mountains where memories rot and giants once slept. Past the bones of empires and the scars of forgotten kings, toward the Shattered Spire.
And in the Dominion's court, far to the east, the Remnant stood before Cireth once more. His hood cast no shadow, and yet the light bent around him.
His words were soft.
"You sent death to crush him. But he follows the lineage of regret. And that is the strongest chain of all."
Cireth, once proud, now watched her hands tremble.
"What happens if he reaches the Spire?"
The Remnant smiled.
It was the smile of graves.
"Then he will remember everything. And the world will have to choose whether to forgive him. Or kill him."