Author's Note: This is the correct continuation after Chapter 17. Please read this before returning to the previous chapter.
Elira hadn't set foot near Emberlight Home since the night she left the palace. Now, standing before the soot-stained walls of the orphanage that raised her, it felt like another life.
It was quiet—too quiet.
Daren waited at the edge of the hill, giving her space. "Are you sure this is where the vision led you?"
Elira nodded, her palm still tingling from the vision by the creek. "There's something here… something buried."
She pushed open the heavy doors and stepped into the hollow silence of Emberlight.
---
The orphanage looked untouched, but her heart beat faster with every step.
Memories surfaced—of whispered lullabies, shared bread, Sister Marella's prayers. But under them… darker ones. The night she burned the curtain by accident. The way the other children feared her touch. The day Sister Marella took her below the chapel and warned her, "Never go near the door with the iron lock."
That door now stood cracked open.
She descended the narrow stairwell beneath the chapel. The stone walls closed in, and the air grew warmer.
A soft light flickered ahead.
---
Inside, a single torch burned with unnatural fire.
Elira stepped into the chamber—and stopped.
At its center lay a stone basin filled with black water. Floating above it, suspended by nothing, was an obsidian shard—shaped like a dagger.
A familiar whisper filled the room:
> "To claim your fire is to claim your truth."
Elira approached the shard. Her reflection stared back from the water—eyes glowing faintly gold.
She reached out.
The moment her fingers touched the obsidian, fire surged through her chest—and memory poured into her mind like molten steel.
---
She saw a woman wrapped in flame—her mother.
A Flameborn. Hunted. Betrayed.
In her arms, a baby. Elira.
Sister Marella stood nearby, tears in her eyes, taking the child from the dying woman. "I will protect her," the sister whispered. "She must never know what she is."
Elira staggered back, gasping.
She wasn't just a girl with magic.
She was the last heir of the First Flame.
And Emberlight had been her sanctuary and her prison.
--
When she emerged from the chapel cellar, her eyes burned with light.
Daren looked up sharply. "What happened?"
She held the obsidian shard in her hand—no longer just a weapon. A key. A relic.
"My mother died to hide me," she said quietly. "They feared what I could become."
Daren stepped back slightly. "And what will you become, Elira?"
She didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
The sky darkened overhead as thunder rolled in.
She was no longer running.
She was preparing to burn everything down.