Episode 3: Ashes of the First Flame
[Narration: One Night Later — Veilhart Manor]
The grandfather clock creaked and chimed 3:33 AM.
Kairo sat at the kitchen table, the grimoire closed firmly beside him. In the other part of the room, Lyra was unconscious on the couch, breathing shallowly, hands jerking in her sleep. She hadn't moved since the trial in the attic — but her presence was anything but sleeping.
His right wrist still carried the sigil of the spark trial — now supplemented by a second mark: a white flame bound in a broken circle.
He hadn't slept. Couldn't.
Because whenever he shut his eyes, he saw the charred page.
The Fourth Spark's bearer who preceded Lyra did not pass.
His name. was Kairo Veilhart.
It didn't add up.
Was it a fabrication?
Or a recollection from a life he couldn't recall anymore?
The grimoire lay still, but he could have sworn it was watching him — as if it were breathing under its leather cover.
Scene 1: The Whispering Woods
The following day, Kairo took Lyra to the ruined greenhouse at the back of the manor, now consumed by and lost behind dense bramble. The villagers referred to it as the witch's garden, though it had been his grandfather's — a plant enthusiast fixated on symbols and ancient fire lore.
Kairo set her down on a creaky bench. Sunlight streaming through broken glass heated her skin. He smoothed out tangled black hair from her face.
She murmured, eyes closed—
"The Hollow sees. even when we sleep…"
Her eyes snapped open.
"Kairo."
He backed up, surprised.
Lyra pushed herself up, slowly. The light behind her pupils had vanished — replaced with fear, fatigue, and memory.
"You bound me," she said in a flat tone.
He nodded. "I had to. You weren't… you anymore."
"You think you saved me." Her tone was frigid.
"Didn't I?"
She rose, unsteady, then gazed out through the broken glass of the greenhouse.
"I still hear it."
"The Hollow?" he asked.
She turned.
"The real flame, Kairo. The one you forgot."
Scene 2: Memory Locked
That evening, while Lyra slept, Kairo went back to the attic.
He put his hand on the grimoire.
"Show me the bearer before her."
The book did not budge.
"Show me me."
He had a burning pain arrow through his head. He dropped to his knees as a torrent of pictures ripped through him — blinding flashes of past existences, lost faces, cries in a language he did not know but somehow comprehended.
He saw an ash battlefield.
A spire of twisting fire.
And himself — older, frigid — alive and burning before a thousand standing shadows.
He woke up hours later, bleeding out his nose. The grimoire lay open.
One page was aglow:
[Memory Echo: The First Flame]
The First Bearer was not appointed. He was constructed.
He was the prototype. The spark given form.
He forgot so he could live once more. But the flame does not forget.
The Fourth Spark consumed him from the inside out.
Kairo's hands were shaking.
He wasn't merely a bearer.
He was the first.
And he'd failed.
Scene 3: The Hollow Archive
Lyra woke up the following morning with lucidity — and alarm.
"Kairo," she stated, holding onto his arm, "we need to leave. There's a room under the manor. Your grandfather constructed it. A vault. where the Hollow Spark was initially tested."
"Tested?"
"Your grandfather was attempting to replicate it," she breathed. "To divide it. That's what created the Archive."
Under the greenhouse, hidden behind a decaying wall of vines and iron, they discovered a trapdoor. They strained to pry it open and fell into darkness.
The air was heavy with ash.
And the walls — in scribbled script. Dancing words in fire.
They stepped into an air-sealed room where dozens of diaries were strewn about, some still whole, others half-consumed by flames.
But one was different — in obsidian glass.
Lyra pushed her hand against it. It opened.
There was a note inside for Kairo.
Handwritten.
"If you are reading this, then your flame has been reignited. You won't remember me. But I remember you."
"You were the one who asked me to erase it all."
"You told me to start over. To find her. To fail again… so you could understand the truth."
"The Hollow Spark is not a curse. It is a prison for gods."
Scene 4: The Sleeping God
The room shook.
The writing on the walls started to reorganize — creating a symbol neither of them had ever seen before.
Then Lyra whispered, as if something was speaking through her once more:
"He's waking up."
"Who?"
Her eyes turned jet black. Her voice layered, as if multiple beings were speaking at the same time.
"The Sealed One.
The god buried in flame.".
The one who picked you, not once.
but every time.
Final Scene: A New Flame Awakens
Suddenly, the grimoire in Kairo's hands ignited — but didn't burn.
Its pages whirled wildly, landing on a blank page.
A voice thundered through the chamber.
Not Lyra's.
Not the book's.
But from below.
"Kairo Veilhart, first of flame.
You bind the Hollow.
You carry memory.
You awaken the Archive.
But will you burn for it… again?"
The blank page erupted with words.
A new trial.
[Spark Trial IV: The God's Sentence]
One flame must die.
One bearer must break.
Choose what you fear more:
The truth of your origin…
Or the death of the one you love.
Kairo looked at Lyra, now unconscious once more, a white flame flickering in her chest.
The sigil on his wrist turned red.
Ground began to crumble under their feet.
And the voice returned:
"Choose. or we choose for you."
???? Spark Status
Kairo Veilhart
???? Spark Level: 2 (Mirror Tongue, Memory Echo)
???? Status: Bound to Lyra
???? Memory Fragment Unlocked: Prototype Bearer
???? Trial IV Active: The God's Sentence