Part IV — The Kingdom Cracks
Velmora had outlawed magic two centuries ago.
But outlawing a force does not erase it.
It compresses it.
And compression creates pressure.
Across the kingdom:
A soldier healed too quickly from a mortal wound.
A widow dreamed of speaking with her dead husband — and woke with dirt beneath her fingernails.
A priest's shadow began moving before he did.
Rumors spread like hairline fractures in stone.
The Cathedral doubled executions.
The Crown issued harsher decrees.
Curfews tightened.
Informants were rewarded.
Fear intensified.
But fear, when overused, dulls.
And beneath the Cathedral, in a locked chamber far older than Velmora itself, something stirred in chains carved not of iron —
But of belief.
The original flame.
Not evil.
Not holy.
Simply alive.
It had waited two hundred years.
It could wait longer.
But now?
It felt warmth again.