Chapter 25
The fire didn’t roar.
It pulsed.
Low. Measured. Ancient.
Elira stood at the edge of the City of Origin, a wound carved into the world itself. Obsidian towers jutted like broken ribs through layers of frozen ash. Flames burned inside glass veins, caged in a prison of ice.
It was beautiful in the way a battlefield was beautiful. After the bodies were gone, but the ghosts remained.
Kael stepped beside her, his breath visible. “This place feels… wrong.”
“It feels like me,” Elira whispered.
And that terrified them both.
The Keeper of Flame
They descended the path carved by time and ruin.
At the heart of the ruins stood an altar swallowed by roots of frost-fire branches of blackened bark and glowing embers.
There, waiting, was the woman from the Sanctuary.
Her hood lower
