The Hollow Expanse was a graveyard.
Not of corpses—but of faith.
It had once been holy—blessed by the First Flame, the ancient source from which all fire-possessing souls derived their strength. But war and the passing of years devoured it. Now it lay empty, wind-swept, and still. An ocean of rock and sand.
Kairo stood at its edge, his cloak billowing in the wind.
The Circle behind him—Sera, Virella, Elin, Niko, and three others of the Awakened who had joined since Eldrin's fall. Whispers of Kairo's true blood began to spread.
Some whispered that he was a symbol.
Others, a danger.
But all of them trailed.
Because something was awakened beneath the dust.
They rode two days on gagging winds and shifting sands. The fires of the Cradle receded the farther they went, as though the land itself resisted their passage.
The sky never changed. Always gray. Always still.
Until they reached the place in Kairo's dream.
It was not a building.
It was a wound.
A gigantic scar sliced into the earth—miles wide, smoldering on the borders as if seared inward. Smoke drifted in lazy spirals, and heat shimmered the air, as if burned.
Sera stepped forward a step, then froze. "It's watching us."
Elin raised a hand. "The flame here is. ancient. It remembers pain."
Kairo nodded. "This is the rim of the First Pyre."
And then the ground slipped away from them.
They slid in silence, trapped in a whirlpool of flame and wind—not fire that burned, but fire that bore. Like traveling through memory.
They stepped down into a cave of dark glass and glowing stone. Pillars rose above, inscribed with runes none of them could read—yet somehow Kairo understood.
"It's the Flameborn script," he whispered. "The Source's language."
Sera slowly turned to him. "You know what it says."
"No. But I recall now."
Arkan's sword vibrated at his side.
A fire of light burned in the room's center.
Not of wood or coal—but of light.
A column of burning gold that reached for the sky, suspended in the air. It didn't flicker. It waited.
Virella cocked an eyebrow. "So why won't it go out?"
Elin took another step forward, brow furrowed. "It's not completed."
"The flame is literally real," Kairo said. "But it needs a spark."
He stepped closer to it.
The ground trembled.
Then a voice thundered through the cave:
> "Only the rightful heir can relight the First Flame."
The Circle bared blades. Shadows crept to the edges of the room. And out of darkness stepped a figure clothed in half-dark.
Not the Ash King.
Something worse.
A man dressed in Flameborn's cloth, blackened by the flames, his face half-hidden behind a crack'd golden mask.
"No, no, no," Kairo snarled.
The figure did not answer at first. He looked at the pyre—then at Kairo.
> "I am the one who could not light it."
He removed the mask.
Kairo flinched.
The man's face was like his own.
Aged. Weathered. Scars.
> "I am Rael," the man declared. "Your blood. Your brother."
The room was filled with an instant silence as hard-hitting as a hammer.
Kairo's flame faltered.
"That's impossible."
Rael's expression stayed blank. "They told the same to me. When I was born, I was burned Flameborn. Hidden. Raised by a cult who served the old ways. I tried to make it to the Pyre before the Ash King tainted the land. I failed."
"Because your flame called to my own. And now. I have to slay you."
His hands broke into flame—white flame.
They erupted like mirrored tempests.
Fire met fire. Will against will.
Rael was faster, older, trained. But Kairo's flame burned deeper—called not only from blood, but from faith.
Their abilities clashed in a burst of light that shattered the pillars.
The Circle strained to maintain the chamber, holding back shadow-creatures drawn to the explosion. Virella and Sera standing back-to-back, blades and flame tangling in time.
"You don't need to fight me!" Kairo shouted. "We can set it alight together!"
Rael hesitated.
And then the shadows pulled at his fire—and his eyes darkened.
The Ash King's voice breathed, faint and cruel.
> "Even the brightest flame casts a shadow."
Rael howled—fighting against the corruption ravaging his mind. Kairo lunged forward, catching his brother's arm, channeling clean fire through him, burning away the dark one memory by memory.
He witnessed Rael's life. The loneliness. The rage. The hope.
And he spoke, softly: "You are not forgotten."
Rael collapsed to the floor.
And the First Pyre reacted.
The room exploded in light.
The golden flame flared to life, climbing up through the ceiling, into the air above the Hollow Expanse.
And across the world…
All Awakened felt it.
In cities.
In mountains.
In hiding.
In chains.
They felt the call.
The Flameborn had come back.
Rael flailed, coughing on smoke. "He'll come now," he croaked. "The Ash King. He felt it."
Kairo rose, his eyes burning like twin stars.
"Good," he said.
> "Let him come.".