The journey through the Ashen Wilds began with silence—and fire.
Liora led the way, the ember within her glowing faintly in the fog-choked forest. Trees blackened by past eruptions loomed over them like skeletons. The air reeked of sulfur and old magic, the ground cracked and brittle.
"This place isn't just cursed," Ashara murmured. "It remembers everything that died here."
Elestria walked with her bow drawn, arrow nocked. "Then let it remember us too—alive."
Kael scouted ahead, blades sheathed in elemental runes that shimmered blue against the ash.
Thalen paused beside a scorched stone. "These markings… they're from the First Flame War. The battles that broke the realm."
"Which means we're close," Liora said.
They pressed on.
At midday, a storm rolled in—dark clouds swirling above like boiling ink. Lightning flickered without sound, and a low hum vibrated beneath their feet.
"It's not weather," Elestria said. "It's warning."
Suddenly, from the ash, creatures rose—shadows of bone and cinders. Flame-wraiths, shaped like wolves and serpents, with eyes of molten gold.
"Defensive circle!" Kael barked.
They moved as one. Ashara raised a barrier of wind and light. Thalen launched frostfire blasts to slow the beasts. Elestria loosed arrow after arrow, her melody weaving confusion through the ranks of shadows.
But they kept coming.
Liora reached deep into her ember. The flame responded with urgency—and a new shape formed in her mind: a phoenix, its wings spread across the horizon.
She released the image.
Fire erupted from her, soaring skyward and crashing down like a meteor. The wraiths screamed, vanishing into smoke.
Silence returned—but the forest no longer felt asleep. It watched.
They made camp in a hollow ringed by obsidian thorns. Kael took first watch. Liora sat near the fire, her breath shallow.
"The phoenix," she whispered.
Ashara looked up. "You saw it too?"
"It's a memory. Not mine. Someone else's flame."
Thalen added wood to the fire. "Then it means the embers are merging. You're becoming more than a bearer. You're becoming the flame itself."
Liora didn't reply. Her thoughts burned with visions—of battles long past, of cities lost beneath lava, of a sister torn in two.
The next morning, they reached the ridge of the Valley of Sorrow.
It was not a place of death—it was a graveyard. Ruined temples jutted from rivers of glass. Charred trees stood like mourners. In the center lay a stone circle—cracked and scorched, its glyphs faded with age.
"This is it," Ashara said. "Where the pact was broken."
Elestria stepped forward. "And maybe where it can be healed."
They entered the circle together.
As soon as Liora touched the central stone, the ground trembled. Images flooded her mind—a vision of the Queen and her twin, standing here, hands joined, flames shared.
Then betrayal.
A scream echoed in her head—the Queen's, as she took the flame and stabbed her sister in the back.
The stone lit with crimson.
"Show them," said the voice of the fallen twin.
Liora projected the memory.
Kael and the others watched the vision unfold. "She wasn't always evil," he whispered. "She chose to be."
"She believed the flame should rule," Elestria said. "Not protect."
Ashara added, "And that belief poisoned everything."
The glyphs ignited.
Suddenly, a storm of flame rose from the circle—and in its heart stood a shadowy figure.
Iridell.
Not fully formed—an echo, a specter of her past.
"You think you've won something?" she hissed. "This place is a wound. It cannot heal."
Liora stepped forward, her eyes glowing gold. "Then we become the flame that cauterizes it."
She raised her hand.
The ember flared.
And the valley began to change.
Ash melted into soil. Ruins straightened. The flame flowed like water—cleansing, not destroying.
Iridell's echo screamed, shattering into sparks.
When the light faded, the circle stood whole.
Kael stepped beside her. "One wound closed. One left to face."
Liora nodded. "The Queen."