Flame Beneath The Moon.

19 Years Ago....  The torches of Ignis Citadel burned with golden flames that required no fuel, no tending. They had burned thus for a thousand years, since the first Phoenix King had kindled them with his own immortal fire. Now, they flickered. King Xander stood upon the Obsidian Throne, a seat carved from the heart of a fallen star. It was cool beneath him, a strange and unwelcome sensation. The usual warmth, the faint thrum of power that connected him to every stone, every flame, every living soul within his kingdom—it was dimming. He could feel the lifeblood of Ignis draining away, not with a violent rush, but a slow, inexorable bleed. His gaze swept across the Grand Hall. Guards clad in scale and flame stood at their posts, frozen mid-stride. Courtiers, their mouths open in silent conversation, were caught like insects in amber. A child with a ball of crackling orange light in her hands was suspended in a leap, her laughter a ghost in the suddenly still air. It was not death. He would have fought death with tooth and claw, with fire and fury. This was something worse. This was nothingness. The wrongness had arrived without form, without herald. One moment, the Citadel had pulsed with the vibrant chaos of life. The next, this. A presence, ancient and patient and utterly devoid of warmth, had simply unmade the flow of time. It had draped a shroud of stasis over his entire realm, from the highest towers to the deepest magma-baths. The dragon part of him, the proud, burning core that had ruled for centuries, roared defiance. The phoenix aspect, the part that understood cycles and endings, whispered a terrifying truth: this was not an enemy to be vanquished by strength. This was a law being rewritten. Power against power would only shatter what remained. He had one choice. Xander closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of his beautiful, arrested world. He reached inward, past the dragon's rage, past the phoenix's sorrow, to the singular, precious point of light that existed outside these walls. A memory of soft hands, of a laugh like wind chimes, of the scent of damp earth and wild heather. A life he had chosen for love, a life he had hidden from the world to protect. He focused on that point of light, on the promise it held. He poured everything he was into it. The fire of the throne, the soul of the kingdom, the unbreakable will of a Phoenix-Dragon King. It was an agony of unmaking, a tearing of the spirit. He funneled the legacy of Ignis, not as a weapon, but as a seed. A single, perfect tear of molten gold traced a path down his cheek. It fell to the obsidian floor, where it did not sizzle, but sank into the stone like a memory. "Grow," he whispered, the last word spoken in his kingdom. "Flame Beneath the Moon." And as the last vestment of his will fled him, as the golden light in his eyes cooled to grey, King Xander felt the final threads of connection to his world sever. He became just another statue in the silent hall, a king on a throne, waiting for a dawn that might never come. ***