Chapter 13: Embers of the Forgotten
927 Words
Snowmelt had barely begun when the tremors arrived.
Not in the ground—but in the minds of those attuned to magic.
Dreamseers across the realm woke screaming. Astrologists threw their charts into fire. Three archivists of the Ember Cloaks were found catatonic, eyes fixed toward the north, mouths muttering the same phrase:
“He remembers.”
At first, it was dismissed as residual trauma from the Wyrmfrost tension. But then a storm struck the Sapphire Coast, one that ignored every natural law. Lightning struck the same point twelve times. Tides receded, then froze in place. No wind. No rain. Only a silence so absolute it crushed breath.
And when it passed, a sigil appeared, etched into the shoreline.
Not of the Wyrmfrost.
But older.
Older than kings.
Older than the Accord.
Vivienne was among the first to see the sigil.
A spiral of ash with thirteen edges, etched into the bedrock as if seared by divine flame. Her hand trembled as she reached toward it—not out of fear, but recognition.
The Fragment stirred within her.
Not in warning.
In mourning.
She whispered to Isolde: “There is something we forgot.”
Back in the Hall of Resonance, the Council pored over ancient texts and forbidden scrolls, even ones locked beneath the Vaults of Silence—relics from the Age of the Hollow Wars.
Only one matched the sigil.
It was the mark of the Ashen Creed.
A civilization thought extinguished during the first founding of the Empire. Not rebels. Not cultists. But erased. Deliberately, thoroughly.
Their creed had been simple:
Memory is the only god.
And it must burn to be reborn.
“What does that mean?” Kaela asked.
“It means,” Isolde answered, “that they believed history could not be trusted unless destroyed first.”
Vivienne added, “They didn’t build thrones. They built echoes.”
Reports surged from the outer provinces.
Rivers that reversed their course.
Children born with names older than language.
Ruins that revealed libraries when touched by ash.
A merchant caravan found turned to glass near the Hollow Steppe, all with their mouths open in awe.
Each bore the same phrase burned into their belongings:
Your silence is our fire.
Lucien sat alone in his quarters one night, reading an unmarked codex recovered from the Sapphire Coast.
It began with a riddle:
What speaks with every voice, but has no mouth?
He wrote: “Memory.”
The page turned itself.
The Council sent scouts.
None returned.
Finally, a delegation was chosen. Ten loremasters. Four Spellguard. One chronomancer. And Vivienne.
They journeyed across the Hollow Expanse.
On the sixth day, shadows walked backward.
On the eighth, Thorn’s sword turned into ink.
On the tenth, they reached Vel Caelora.
It had not crumbled.
It had waited.
Vel Caelora was a city untouched by time. Black spires gleamed like obsidian mirrors. Streets pulsed faintly beneath their feet—as if the city itself breathed.
Statues lined the roads, faceless and yet achingly familiar. Each wore plain robes. No crowns. No swords. But their hands were all raised in the same gesture: palm out, fingers splayed, as if halting something unseen.
At the city’s heart stood the Ash Temple.
Vivienne entered alone.
Inside, silence thickened.
Not emptiness.
Anticipation.
Then she heard it—a whisper made of everyone.
A voice formed of overlapping memories.
A thousand regrets made manifest.
“Do you remember what you burned?”
She stepped forward. “No,” she said. “But I’m here to learn.”
The flame at the altar erupted. And from it rose the Archivist.
Cloaked in swirling ash, faceless, yet bearing every face Vivienne had ever seen—Lucien. Seraphine. Malric. Even herself.
The Archivist spoke not in words, but in experiences.
Vivienne saw:
—Children sacrificed to stabilize royal bloodlines.
—Entire cities buried for choosing the wrong anthem.
—A library of prophecies sealed away because they foretold a future without kings.
The Ashen Creed had not died in war.
They had been unwritten.
“I am not here to destroy,” Vivienne whispered.
The Archivist looked at her.
“You are here to choose.”
Then, it offered her a new Fragment.
She took it.
The instant it touched her palm, her mind shattered—and reformed.
She saw every forgotten truth.
Every hidden pain.
And she did not look away.
They returned changed.
Vivienne’s hair turned silver.
Her eyes—shards of shifting memory.
She could not speak for a week.
When she did, her first words were:
“The Accord must open.”
“What does that mean?” Lucien asked.
“It means,” she said, “we no longer build law from silence. We build it from truth—even when it burns us.”
She created the Hall of Echoes.
A chamber where any citizen could speak their history, and it would be preserved.
No editing. No erasing.
Memory became law.
And the Council listened.
Some wept.
Some raged.
But all heard.
From this came the Third Cycle:
The Age of Reckoning.
Where truth was no longer feared.
It was wielded.
And the Ashen Creed was no longer forgotten.
They were honored.
As the keepers of flame.
In her private chamber, Vivienne added the new Fragment to the sealed vault.
Three now glowed within:
—Power.
—Purpose.
—And Memory.
And beside them, she etched a final warning:
The world burns not because it forgets.
But because it refuses to remember.
To be continued...
- Writer
