Dawn came slow to the flame-ruined plains. The light did not warm. It revealed.
Kael stirred before Lyra woke, standing at the edge of the glass fields, shadows flickering around his boots. The wind had a voice that morning, faint and female. A whisper of a name he hadn't spoken aloud in years:
Alenya.
He didn't turn.
He couldn't.
Behind him, Lyra wrapped her arms around his waist. "It's getting stronger, isn't it?"
He nodded. "Something out there remembers her. And it's not just me."
They reached the Scorchspire that night — a tower forged in dragonfire, leaning like a wounded sentinel. The air inside crackled with dormant magic, and Lyra's skin prickled with memory that wasn't hers. The sigils glowed faintly as she approached.
Kael's hands brushed over a broken wall. "This was part of the Flame Citadel. Before it fell."
Lyra knelt beside a basin of obsidian.
"Something's here," she whispered.
The basin rippled.
Kael stepped closer — and in the mirror of the stone, a woman appeared.
Cloaked in red flame. Eyes burning gold. Hair like coals.
Alenya.
Kael's breath stopped.
She wasn't whole. Her form wavered, spectral, torn between time and memory.
"Kael," she said. "You must not go to the Citadel."
Lyra reached for Kael's hand, grounding him. "Why not?"
Alenya's gaze moved to Lyra. And for the briefest moment, something almost like pain flickered in her face.
"Because the bond you share… it's the door and the lock. They will use it to awaken what sleeps beneath."
"What sleeps beneath what?" Lyra asked.
But the vision broke.
The basin shattered.
And the Scorchspire fell silent.
Kael sat against the tower wall that night, head in his hands.
"She's trapped," he said. "A ghost, a warning. Maybe worse."
Lyra crouched beside him. "You still love her."
"I honor her. But I love you."
She didn't pull away. "Then we fight for her too. No one else burns for us."
Far above, in the ink of space, The Watcher closed its third eye.
"The dead remember," it said. "Let's see if the living do too."