Tame The Flame

The First Spark

The sun had not yet risen when the alarm sounded.

It wasn’t a horn or bell, but a sudden shift in the runes carved along the stronghold’s perimeter. A low, shimmering pulse of energy raced through the walls like a heartbeat quickening under threat. The glow turned from soft blue to harsh crimson. Every sentry within a mile of the tower awoke to the same sensation: danger drawing near like a storm pressed close against the skin.

Keal was already awake. He hadn’t truly slept in days.

The echo of the scout’s last words haunted him: You made gods. And gods attract monsters.

He hadn’t believed it at first. Not entirely. But some part of him—older, quieter, forged through years of war and consequence—recognized the rhythm of what was coming. The lull before the new storm. The chill before the first death.

Across the stronghold, Ava threw on her armor in perfect silence. Her movements were precise, instinctual, practiced. Even now, she spared one hand to gently adjust the blanket over Nyra’s sleeping form. The girl didn’t stir, though her brow was furrowed, as if her dreams had already reached for the coming fire.

Seraphina moved with different grace—flowing silk giving way to armor of tempered flame. She strapped Siora to her chest in a sling reinforced with heat wards. It was how she had led armies: with her child close to her heart and death in her eyes.

Lima, already in the corridor, was speaking to a series of rune-forged mirrors. “Three groups. Two moving fast, cloaked in null-light. They’ve learned to suppress Ether traces. Coordinated. Targeting the coast village first.”

Keal’s voice was calm when it came: “Then they’ve grown bolder.”

“They’re probing,” Lima replied. “Not for weakness—proof. They want to see if we’ll respond.”

Ava stepped into view, tightening her gauntlets. “They’ll get their answer.”

Within the hour, Keal stood on the bridge of light that connected their stronghold to the mainland. The sky above was caught between night and dawn, stained the color of bruised violets and embers. The eastern winds carried the first whispers of smoke.

The coast village was burning.

He saw it in flashes—flickering runes on distant towers, reports from sentries who had arrived too late. Bodies. Broken stone. One of the children had been taken.

Not theirs. But a child like them.

Ether-touched.

One of the “miracles.”

They arrived too late to save the village. But not too late to find what was left.

Burnt symbols carved into the trees around the perimeter. Glyphs from a dead language—archaic commands bound in old blood. A signal. Or a curse. Ava stepped over one of them with practiced disgust. “They’ve resurrected binding rites,” she growled. “Old world dogma.”

“They didn’t just kill,” Seraphina added, holding the scorched remains of a child’s toy. “They unmade.”

Kaelen stood at the edge of the ruins. His eyes were glazed with distant light, hands raised slightly, as if measuring the gravity in the air. “They weren’t trying to destroy this place,” he said, his voice faint. “They were trying to open something.”

Lima’s expression hardened. “Open what?”

Kaelen blinked. “A doorway.”

That night, the war room was lit again—not by blood, but by fury.

Maps sprawled across the tables. Magic flared in orbit around illusionary diagrams of the coast, of the Etherstream paths, of the old broken temples from before the war. Siora slept on a cushion beside her mother, but her tiny hand twitched with sparks whenever someone raised their voice.

“They’re setting a stage,” Keal said. “Not just random strikes. Ritualized.”

“Sacrificial,” Seraphina agreed. “Ether-blood is rare. Powerful. It might be the key they need to reach something deeper.”

Ava slammed a dagger into the map. “Then we end them. We take the fight to the ruins of Skyhold before they can draw another circle.”

Lima didn’t look up. “We can’t just burn every ruin they touch. They’re playing a long game. We need to know what they’re building, what they’re feeding.”

Seraphina’s eyes narrowed. “You think something else is guiding them.”

“I know something is,” Lima replied. “They were always fanatics. But this… this is too precise.”

Keal crossed his arms. “Then we need more than steel and flame. We need knowledge.”

That evening, Nyra came to Keal’s chambers without speaking. She climbed onto the balcony rail, sat cross-legged, and stared into the wind. For a long time, Keal said nothing. Just sat beside her.

“They’re calling something,” Nyra said finally. “But it’s not listening to them.”

He turned. “What do you mean?”

She touched her chest. “I can feel it. Like a drumbeat behind the world. The Order thinks they’re in control. But they’re not.”

Keal’s stomach sank. “What is it then?”

She didn’t answer at first.

Then: “Something very old. It doesn’t want control. Just return.”

In the council room, Lima laid out new reports. Fragments from intercepted messages. Symbols unearthed from their enemy’s dead. All pointed to one phrase.

“The Ash Prophet.”

An ancient name. Older than any throne. Ava scoffed at it, but Keal looked shaken.

“I heard that name once,” he said. “During the Fold War. Deep in the ruined core. It wasn’t a person. It was a… presence.”

“A god?” Seraphina asked.

Keal’s voice dropped. “No. A mistake.”

The next morning, Keal dreamed.

Or maybe it wasn’t a dream.

He stood in a blackened field. The sky was ash. The stars were gone. Fire crackled in every direction, but no heat touched him. Shadows moved at the edge of his sight—not men, not beasts, but shapes.

And in the center stood a child. A girl. Her face was familiar.

Nyra. No… not quite.

Her eyes were hollow stars. Her voice was all the wind he had ever feared.

“They will come. And they will break everything you built.”

He stepped forward. “Who are you?”

She only smiled. “I am the price.”

Then he awoke, heart pounding, cold sweat soaking his bedclothes.

Atop the tower that night, Keal stared out across the land. Stars wheeled above, but in the southern sky, something burned.

A new constellation.

Six stars, in a perfect circle, each red as blood.

A sigil.

And in the wind, faint but unmistakable, came a voice:

"Keal... protect them. Or lose them all."

His hand curled into a fist.

“Then let them come.”