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Chapter 40 - Chapter 40: Flamescar

The Flameheart Citadel stood silent, its great halls bathed in dim embers. Morning had not yet broken, but the air was thick with premonition—like the world itself was holding its breath.

Seris sat alone in the chamber of echoes, the hollowed atrium once used by the Flame Sovereigns of old. The walls were etched with memory—names of the fallen, of rulers who had shaped the world with fire and fury. But one wall remained bare. Reserved.

For her.

She ran a hand across the unmarked stone, feeling the warmth beneath her fingertips. It pulsed faintly—like the heartbeat of a dying ember.

Kaelen's footsteps approached softly behind her.

"Couldn't sleep?" he asked.

She didn't answer right away.

Then, softly, "Do you ever feel like… peace is just the pause between wars?"

Kaelen sat beside her. "Always. But that doesn't make the pause any less real. Or less precious."

Seris looked over at him. "They call me Sovereign now. Flame Reforged. Bearer of the Ember Pact. But sometimes, I still feel like that girl running barefoot across firestones, terrified and pretending she wasn't."

He reached for her hand. "That girl became this woman. You didn't lose her. You carried her here."

She squeezed his fingers tightly.

And then the tremor came.

Not a quake. Not a storm. But a single pulse—deep and searing. From beneath the earth itself.

Both of them stilled.

From the tower above, bells began to ring—sharp and discordant.

A call.

A warning.

---

They gathered quickly on the upper spire—Ashra, Arin, the Elders, and scouts returning breathless from the outer gates.

Ashra's expression was grim. "The Wellspring is bleeding."

Elder Maen leaned on his staff, voice cracked with disbelief. "That is impossible."

"No," Seris said, already striding toward the western passage. "It means something's broken through. Something old."

They rode swiftflames to the base of the western cliffs, where the edge of Solvyris met the ancient foundation of the Wellspring Cavern. What they found there halted even Arin's endless fire.

The Wellspring had ruptured.

The sacred flow of elemental energy—a balanced stream of all six forces—now spilled erratically, streaked with dark crimson. As though the very lifeblood of the world had been poisoned.

Kaelen knelt beside the stream, his hand hovering over it.

"It's tainted. Not corrupted by Shadow… but scorched."

Ashra paled. "Scorched? But that would mean—"

Seris drew a sharp breath. "Someone is using fire without balance. Without the Pact."

Arin's voice was soft. "A rogue Flamebearer?"

Kaelen stood, eyes hardening. "No. A Flamescar."

The word landed like a knife in the stone.

A myth—barely remembered, spoken only in dire warnings. A Flamebearer consumed entirely by fire, severed from will, ruled only by burn and wrath.

Seris clenched her fists.

"If there is a Flamescar… and it has awakened beneath Solvyris… then we must find them. Before the Wellspring tears itself apart."

---

Tracking the disturbance led them deeper underground—past tunnels long sealed, into the forgotten vaults where the first Flame Sovereigns once forged their blades and burned their truths into stone.

The heat grew unbearable.

Even Kaelen, wreathed in wind, sweat beneath the pressure. The walls glowed red—not from torches, but from the raw breath of power gathering ahead.

Then they saw it.

A figure, wreathed in fire so wild it burned blue. Eyes hollow. Skin etched with veins of molten gold. Hair ablaze, not flowing but writhing.

They stood in the center of a ruined sanctum, hands raised as the Wellspring's veins coiled around them like serpents.

Seris stepped forward.

"Flamebearer," she said carefully. "Who are you?"

The figure's head tilted. Their voice was a choked hiss.

"I was… no one. Until the Crown forgot me. Until you forgot me."

The fire surged.

"I was born from ashes. Abandoned. Cast into the deep when your line rose."

Seris's heart ached. "You're one of them. One of the Purged."

A name from history. From shame.

A secret the Sovereigns never spoke aloud—when, long ago, Flamebearers whose gifts burned too violently were entombed, not healed. For safety. For order.

For control.

Kaelen's face twisted. "They sealed you here."

The Flamescar laughed—high and cracked.

"I am not alone."

And the walls around them breathed.

Dozens of figures, faint and flickering, emerged from the stone—each bearing a spark of corrupted fire. Trapped souls. Twisted remnants of what they once were.

Seris's crown flared.

"No more lies," she whispered. "No more forgetting."

She stepped into the fire.

Ashra screamed. Kaelen tried to follow, but the flames held him back.

Seris walked to the center, where the Flamescar burned.

And she knelt.

"I remember you," she said.

She removed her crown.

And offered it.

The Flamescar hesitated. Then reached—hand trembling.

As their fingers touched the metal, a pulse of light erupted—not fire, not shadow, but pure balance.

The corrupted flames flickered.

And died.

The Wellspring stilled.

And for the first time in centuries, the underground halls rang with silence.

Not of suppression.

But peace.

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