"Not all fires burn the same. Some warm. Others remember."
---
The Ashen Fields did not forget.
Their soil was jagged and dry, the color of old bone and blood rust. Once, they were fertile plains where the Pact of the Seven was first signed. Now, the land groaned with the weight of unburied names.
Thorne knelt beside a ridge, his fingers brushing against a charred sigil half-buried in the dust a fragment of a banner, long since blackened. The emblem was a lion with its mouth sewn shut.
The Silent King. The last to fall before the Oathfire scorched the realm.
"How fitting," he muttered.
The silence around him was not empty. It was full of voices ghosts of the fallen, whispering through ash. He had marched across this deadland a hundred times in dreams. This time, it was real.
---
The Ember Circle
The rebel camp was hidden beneath fractured cliffs, where no birds flew and no flame dared rise too high.
They called themselves The Ember Circle, though few among them still believed in prophecy. They followed Thorne not because he promised a crown but because he refused one.
He entered the tent, ducking beneath the tattered flap. A map of Caerthalion lay sprawled across a table, pinned with black-inked blades. Around it stood three figures.
Marrek, a one-eyed former Oathbound general, spat a curse.
Seraine, a seer branded with old runes, whispered prayers in a dead tongue.
Kael, the youngest, held a dagger with trembling hands. "They crowned the bastard," he said. "The fire has chosen."
"No," Thorne replied. "The fire was forced. It burns out of spite."
"Still," Marrek growled, "he wears the crown. He bleeds royal."
"Then let him bleed for us."
Thorne slammed his fist on the map, pointing to the center: Caerthus, the Throne of Wounds.
"We move before the ash settles."
---
Blood Before the Vow
That night, around the hidden fire pit, Seraine told a tale from before the Pact.
"In the beginning," she said, "there were no thrones. Only names carved into the skin, and fire that judged them."
Her voice, reedy and brittle, pierced the air like a blade dulled by sorrow.
"Then came the vow that built kingdoms. And so came the first curse:
'To rule is to be devoured last.'"
Kael shuddered. "You believe the new king knows this?"
Thorne did not answer at first.
He stared into the embers, his eyes dark and unreadable.
"He'll learn," he said. "Or he'll choke on the ashes."
---
The Message of Flame
At dawn, Thorne stood at the edge of the Ashen Fields again. The wind had changed. It blew from the city now thick with incense and iron.
From beneath his cloak, he drew a scroll wrapped in crimson twine.
The seal was made not of wax but of dried blood.
He turned to Kael. "Release the wind crow. Send this to the capital."
Kael hesitated. "But won't they know it's from you?"
Thorne smiled. "That's the point."
As the crow took flight, the scroll fluttered slightly open in its claws. Inside, written in ash-ink, were only four words:
"The fire remembers everything."
---
In the Palace of Ash
Eryndor sat alone in the war chamber.
His hand still throbbed from carving his name into the Hall of Names. Sleep eluded him. His breath fogged the cold glass of the window. Below, the capital simmered uneasy, watching.
Lysael entered without knocking.
"There's been a message," she said, her expression unreadable.
He took the scroll, feeling the brittle edges crumble slightly in his grip.
He read the words once.
Then again.
Then a third time.
And he understood.
The rebellion had not died with his coronation.
It had only begun to burn louder.