Alina hit the ground with a thud that knocked the breath from her lungs. Heat licked her skin. Not the divine burn of the Listeners—but fire. Real, searing, elemental flame.
She looked up and gasped.
The world around her was ancient.
Stone buildings carved from obsidian. Skies the color of fresh blood. Trees that crackled like kindling with every breeze. And people—hundreds of them—marked by glowing sigils across their foreheads.
Selene landed beside her, disoriented but conscious. "Where are we?"
A woman approached them, cloaked in white ash. Her eyes were molten. Her voice was steady. "You're in the First Hollow. Before the Curse. Before the Wound."
Alina rose slowly. "Who are you?"
"I am Emberna. First Flamekeeper. And you are trespassers—unless you remember."
Selene gripped Alina's arm. "It's a memory trial. We have to live it to understand it."
Emberna raised her hand. A searing light passed through them both—and suddenly they were no longer themselves.
Alina gasped as her hands became rough, burned from years of spellwork. She wore the robes of a Flamekeeper. Across from her, Selene's body had shifted too—adorned in silver, with the ancient mark of the Mirrorborn.
They had become the first bearers of the curse.
A younger Emberna stepped forward in this vision, leading them toward a great temple. "The gods never gifted the curse. We did. Out of fear."
Inside the temple, a ritual was being prepared. Fire spiraled in braziers. Chains were soaked in blood. A man knelt at the center—willing, desperate.
"He loved her," Emberna whispered. "But she loved another."
Alina's breath caught.
The curse was born from jealousy.
Not a god's wrath. A lover's.
The ritual began. Fire and shadow intertwined. Sigils etched in skin. Screams and sobs and declarations.
Alina reached out. "We have to stop it."
Selene grabbed her hand. "We can't. It's not our past to rewrite. Only to witness."
But witnessing had a cost.
As the ritual concluded, Alina's skin burned with the same sigils. The magic didn't care that she was from another time.
The First Flamekeeper turned, looking straight at her.
"If you carry the curse, you must carry the truth."
The vision collapsed.
Alina and Selene were thrown into a void of ash and memory.
And the curse itself began to speak.