CHAPTER THREE: ECHOES BEFORE THE FLAME
845 Words
Kael Draven
Eight Years Ago – The Borderlands
Smoke. That was the first thing Kael remembered—the acrid sting in his throat, the black curls rising over the trees.
His mother had screamed. His younger brother had cried until the silence took him.
Kael had fought. At fifteen, he barely knew how to hold a sword, but he swung until his arms went numb. The soldiers in red armor—the Regent’s men—burned the village as punishment. For what? Rumors. A rebel sighting. A missing tax ledger.
Kael had survived by hiding in the ruins beneath the blacksmith’s forge.
When he emerged the next morning, his family was gone. Charred bones in a cradle. The smell of iron in the dirt.
He didn’t cry. Not then. Not ever again.
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Liora Vane
Thirteen Years Ago – The Frozen Garden
The snow was red.
She stood barefoot, clutching a broken locket in her tiny hand. Her dress was torn, her cheek bruised. The woman—the one with the honey-colored voice—was nowhere.
Guards found her outside the Winter Gate, where the palace cliffs met the sea. No name, no memory, just wild eyes and a whisper she wouldn’t stop repeating.
“Don’t let them in. Don’t let them in.”
Lord Vane adopted her days later, claiming it a mercy.
He trained her in etiquette, language, poisons. She learned how to lie with a smile, how to spot weakness in posture and tone. But no matter how much silk they wrapped her in, she never forgot the taste of snow mixed with blood.
And sometimes at night, she heard the voice again.
“Run, little flame.”
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Prince Thalen
Ten Years Ago – The Royal Catacombs
He’d crawled into the tomb to hide.
The coronation hall had exploded in screams minutes before—poison in the chalice, blades in the back, fire on the banners. Thalen, heir to the throne, had been pulled away by an old servant and shoved down a stone shaft behind a tapestry.
“Wait here. Do not come out until you hear my voice.”
But the voice never came.
He waited for two days in the catacombs with nothing but dead kings and the echo of dripping water. When he finally climbed out, the halls were silent. His family gone. His crown stolen.
He wandered the kingdom under a false name for years, learning the land not as a prince, but as a ghost.
Now, he was ready to reclaim it.
But the boy who hid in tombs had learned something: no one stays clean in the dark.
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Nyra Elowen
Six Years Ago – The Hall of Memory
She was twelve when her power awakened.
It happened during a palace trial. A man had been accused of treason—her uncle. They brought witnesses. Evidence. Lies, all of it.
Nyra had touched the judge’s sleeve by accident, and suddenly—
She saw it.
The judge taking bribes. Rewriting testimony. A meeting in candlelight.
She had screamed in the middle of the courtroom, her voice cracking the air. The torches had flared with blue fire. Her eyes glowed. Her father dragged her away, terrified.
Afterward, she was taken to the Whisper Vault beneath the palace, trained to control her gift.
She could touch a memory and twist it. Shatter it. Replace it.
But she never forgot what the head archivist told her:
“Memories are weapons, Nyra. Yours are sharper than steel.”
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Riven
Unknown – Somewhere Between Wars
He didn't remember his real name.
What he did remember was waking up with a knife in his boot and a price on his head—without knowing why.
Mercenaries don’t ask questions. They survive. They take coin, complete the job, vanish.
But there were fragments. A woman screaming in a tower. A black rose branded on his wrist. A voice whispering, “Kill him before he becomes the next one.”
He didn’t know who he was.
But every job he took seemed to get him closer to answers.
And this new contract—the girl in the palace, the one everyone whispered about—felt too familiar.
Like a thread connected to something much bigger.
Something he wasn’t ready to face.
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Back to the Present
The sun dipped beneath the towers of Virelya, and the palace shifted into twilight.
Each of them moved through its shadowed halls unaware of how close they were—how fate had already begun stitching their lives together like silk pulled through bone.
Kael studied the guard rotations and marked every blind spot.
Liora whispered bribes to a kitchen boy for a stolen key.
Thalen paced behind a curtain, breathing deeply, rehearsing lies he hated.
Nyra stared into a pool of enchanted water, watching it ripple with red flame.
Riven stood on a rooftop above the West Wing, blade unsheathed, eyes fixed on the Regent’s chambers.
The storm had not yet begun.
But thunder was rising.
And beneath the palace, the Blood-Touched Gate began to glow.
- Writer
