Emberthorn Academy was no longer the same.
The sky above it bore faint scars—threads of dark light that refused to fade, weaving through the clouds like cracks in reality. The kind only a few of us could see. The kind that whispered warnings in dreams.
When we returned, the gates didn't open for us.
They recognized us.
The old wards flared to life—sigils we hadn't seen before burning in rust-red lines across the stone. A deep pulse ran through the ground, as if the earth itself acknowledged the Circle's return.
We walked through them in silence.
Students watched from windows. Some bowed. Others backed away.
Whispers followed our steps:
"The ones who faced the Echo."
"Is that the girl from Hollowhearth?"
"They say she speaks fire into memory…"
I didn't answer. Let them talk. The stories weren't for them anymore. They were armor now—shields against doubt and fear.
Professor Dorian met us at the High Spire. His eyes were darker than usual, as if shadow had taken root in his thoughts.
"You've done what the headmistress couldn't," he said. "You made the Echo bleed."
"I didn't see blood," Riven muttered.
"Not all wounds bleed."
Behind him, Talwyn stepped forward—robes disheveled, as if she hadn't slept in days.
"You need to see what we found," she said.
The Archive Hall was deeper than we remembered.
Lower than any of us had gone before.
They called it Ashvault Tier. An ancient vault buried under the school, sealed after the Founding War.
It had unsealed itself three days ago.
"Just after you struck the Echo," Talwyn said. "It woke up."
The doors were engraved in spiraling flame script, and when I touched them—
The ring on my finger burned white.
The doors melted open.
Inside was not a vault.
It was a sky.
An impossible dome of constellations and drifting embers, floating over a sea of scorched stone.
In the center: a tree made entirely of flame and bone.
It was not dead. It was dreaming.
And underneath its roots, carved into the stone:
"Here sleeps the First Ember. May it not awaken until the last story is told."
I stepped forward.
The fire in my blood pulsed in time with the tree.
The Circle fanned out behind me, each flamebearer instinctively falling into place.
Talwyn whispered, "We thought the Echo was the danger."
Dorian shook his head.
"No," I said. "The Echo is the warning."
When I touched the tree's trunk, a vision split through me like lightning—
A world after Emberthorn.
Burned. Rebuilt. Burned again.
An unending cycle, each age forgetting the last.
Each flamebearer fighting the same fight with a new name.
Until now.
Until me.
I pulled my hand back, gasping.
Riven steadied me. "What did you see?"
"Us," I said.
"All of us."
"We're not just the next Circle."
"We're the last."