Kael didn't remember falling asleep.
Only the sound of breathing—his own, harsh and uneven—and the echo of the dragon's voice curling like smoke in his mind.
Vaelarith.
He woke to flickering firelight.
Elen sat beside him, tending the flames. Bryn paced the edge of the shattered temple, blade in hand. Thorne stood apart, arms crossed, staring up at the yawning black sky above the Valeheart.
No one spoke.
But the silence was no longer empty.
It pulsed, full of meaning. Full of weight.
Kael sat up, and his body screamed in protest—muscles aching, skin fever-warm, his veins tingling as though liquid fire moved through them.
The Codex lay beside him, shut now, its thorny cover stained with dried blood.
He reached for it.
And it opened to the page he'd seen in the dream-space.
The name still wasn't complete.
Just that single, curling letter.
V.
But he felt it now, rooted somewhere beneath his ribs.
Not a word. Not a name. A presence.
And it was watching.
Bryn was the first to speak.
"You were out for almost a full turn of the cycle."
Kael blinked. "A day?"
"Longer. We kept the Veilheart lit. No shadows came. None dared."
"Because of the Codex?"
"Because of you," Elen said softly.
He turned to her.
Her green eyes met his, and she offered a waterskin. "You were burning in your sleep."
"I dreamed of fire."
"You weren't dreaming."
Kael drank. The water was cool, but it didn't ease the heat in his chest.
"Thorne," he said, turning.
The old Thornbearer didn't look at him. "You should not have spoken its name."
Kael frowned. "I didn't say it aloud."
"You didn't have to."
Thorne stepped forward, his shadow stretching long across the broken altar.
"You've begun something you can't undo, Kael. You lit a signal. Not just to the Vale. To everything."
"I didn't ask for this."
"You touched the Codex. You chose to remember. And now…"
Thorne drew a sigil in the dirt with the butt of his staff. It was a jagged shape—like a spiral cracked through the center.
Kael recognized it.
A binding mark. One used by the Flamebinders during the War of Waking Thrones.
"A mark for those bound to deeper fire," Thorne said.
Elen leaned in, frowning. "You think that's what's happening to him?"
"I know it is."
Kael rose to his feet. Unsteady. Burning.
"What does it mean?"
"That something ancient has noticed you. Something with memory longer than any human soul. And once it sees you…"
Thorne didn't finish.
He didn't have to.
They left the Veilheart at sunrise—or what passed for it here.
The sky above the ruins bled from black to amber as the ceiling of the Undervale shifted, letting in a crack of pale light that painted everything in hues of dying embers.
They walked single file, past the broken thrones and fallen pillars.
The air felt thinner now. Less haunted.
But Kael still heard whispers.
Only now… they whispered to him.
Not fragments. Not confusion.
But intent.
"They come."
The voice wasn't his. Wasn't Vaelarith's.
It was the Vale itself.
He turned. "Thorne—something's coming."
The old man's eyes narrowed. "Where?"
"North ridge."
Thorne didn't ask how Kael knew. He just nodded to Bryn.
"Scouts."
Bryn vanished into the ruins.
Moments later, a cry echoed across the stone.
"Riders! Two dozen! Armored!"
Kael's heart clenched.
Not beasts.
Not shadows.
Men.
They gathered behind a broken wall overlooking the ridge.
Kael peered through a crack.
He saw them now—twenty, maybe more. Cloaks of deep crimson, emblazoned with a twisted sunburst sigil. Their mounts were lean, fast. Their leader wore a helm shaped like a flame-wreathed skull.
Elen hissed. "Ashbinders."
Kael looked at her.
"You know them?"
"They serve the Ember Throne. They hunt Thornbearers."
"Why?"
"They think the fire should serve them."
Thorne growled low. "They would claim Kael."
Bryn returned. "They have scent-marks. Fire-chained hounds. They'll find us."
"We can't run," Elen said. "Not in this terrain."
Kael touched the Codex.
Its pages opened again.
The fire inside him stirred.
He heard the voice—not Vaelarith. Not the Vale.
Something new.
"Use me."
Kael stepped forward.
"Let me try."
The others protested. But Kael didn't stop.
He moved to the center of the ruined courtyard, feet crunching on old bones and half-burned ivy. The Codex hovered in his hand—no longer heavy.
The hounds came first—grey, lean things with ember eyes and smoke trailing from their maws.
Then the riders.
Their leader reined in. Lifted his helmet.
His face was pale, cracked with scars, and his eyes glowed like cinders.
"Thornbearer," he called. "Surrender the Codex. Or burn."
Kael didn't reply.
He lifted the book.
Pages flew open.
Wind screamed.
Symbols rose—living flame, ink and fire and memory.
Kael's mark blazed.
And the fire leapt.
The spell was not a clean one.
It didn't strike like lightning or roar like a dragon.
It unraveled.
The fire touched the first hound—and it forgot. Its body remained, but its form melted, flickering between puppy and monster and mist before vanishing into ash.
The second hound yelped. Fell. Became memory.
Then the riders screamed.
The spell didn't kill them.
It erased them.
Armor clattered to the ground as the men faded—names stripped from their tongues, their histories peeled away.
Only one remained.
The leader.
He raised his sword. "You carry the Seed."
Kael stood tall. "I carry nothing. I am becoming."
The man snarled. "We will return. The fire must be bound."
Kael reached out—not with hand, but thought.
And Vaelarith answered.
A shadow of wings unfurled in the air above the ruins.
Not fully formed.
Just smoke and suggestion.
But it was enough.
The last rider fled.
The wind died.
Kael fell to his knees.
The Codex closed.
Thorne approached him slowly, wary.
"You've changed."
Kael nodded.
Elen knelt beside him. "What did you see?"
He looked at her.
"I didn't see anything. I remembered. I belonged."
"To what?" Bryn asked.
Kael didn't answer right away.
He touched the mark on his chest.
It no longer burned.
It pulsed—like a heartbeat.
"To something that's not done burning."
That night, they camped in the shadow of the Vale's southern wall.
Kael sat apart, eyes fixed on the stars. He no longer felt like the boy who had fallen into the Thorn's depths. He felt… wider. As though pieces of him stretched across the ruins and the wind, scattered in names he hadn't yet remembered.
Elen sat beside him.
"Are you afraid?"
"Yes," he said.
"But not of the Ashbinders."
"No."
"Of the fire?"
Kael turned to her.
"I'm afraid of what I'll become when the name is finished."
Elen was quiet.
Then she touched his hand.
"You're still Kael."
"Am I?"
"You choose who you are. Even fire has a shape."
He didn't reply.
But the Codex stirred.
And somewhere, deep in his soul,
Vaelarith stirred with it.