Deep in the Hollow Expanse, beneath a sky thick with smoke and tempest, the Blackspire Fortress trembled.
Not from assault.
But from stirring.
In its obsidian spire, the Ash King stood still, surrounded by fires that did not dance. They suspended—unnaturally still, as though they awaited his breath.
And then they erupted.
His eyes opened.
No pupil. Only void.
He had felt it.
The First Pyre had been lit.
His throne was hammered from the skeletons of blaze-blasted monsters, chained to the rock of the world itself. For decades, no one dared shatter the stillness of his sanctum.
Now, however, his generals arrived—sullen, awed by the unforeseen surge of power that had swept across the land like a wave.
The Ash King spoke to them without turning.
> "The fire speaks. The heir has revealed himself."
General Kaeth fell to his knees. His armor was breathing embers. "Do we attack the Cradle?"
The King rotated slowly.
His voice was not loud—but made the walls shudder.
> "Not yet."
He stepped away to a wall of black glass, looking out over the lands of ash that he ruled. Fires danced in all directions. Cities were smashed, their fires tied to his will.
"The lad has done what I feared most. He has joined the flame."
Kaeth held his head low. "Then we must divide them again."
"No," the Ash King breathed. "Let them gather. Let them burn more fiercely."
He lifted a hand.
From the earth rose a black shard—pulsing, steaming.
> "And then I will consume them."
The Pyre's beacon was rousing more than the Ash King, though.
Across the broken world, Ahn'peri long thought lost… rose.
At Drenmoor's marshes, a firewalker stirred from three years in stasis and breathed, "It calls me."
In the Glavern mines, children in irons flared into spontaneous flame—untainted, uncorrupted—and their tormentors fled in terror.
In Vael's city in the air, an old master tore away his veil and wailed to the heavens, "The flame is free again!"
The fire, forgotten for so long, had begun to remember itself.
Back at the Cradle, Elin struggled to hold back the flood of newcomers.
Scores—and then hundreds—of flamebearers were arriving each day, brought by rumor and dream. Some had been refugees. Others warriors. All had heard the First Pyre.
And all wished to follow the man who lit it.
Kairo watched them from the center tower, Rael at his side, still pale but recovering.
"They don't know me," Kairo whispered.
Rael smiled palely. "They don't have to. They know what you sparked. That's all that's required."
Sera stood before them, her countenance severe. "The Ash King is waiting no longer. His scouts passed by Red Hollow. He's sizing us up."
"Then we lead him to misjudgment," Kairo replied.
He called in a muster.
The biggest in years since the fall of the Flameborn realm.
Two thousand Awakened. Veterans of the Circles. Newbloods. Nomads. Mercenaries with fires in their hearts.
They stood in ash-fields under the Cradle, torches aloft.
Kairo stepped forward—not in palace finery, but in a cloak of flame-stitched leather, the sigil of one who had shown himself worthy of the fire.
> "You don't know me," he began. "Some of you don't even know yourselves. But the fire does."
He held up his hand, and the flame became white-hot.
We were told to burn quietly. To hide. To serve. But that was long ago.
"We are the reborn flame."
"And we are not waiting for war."
The audience roared.
And across the realm, spies carried the word:
> The heir had mustered his army.
In Blackspire's shadows, the Ash King watched the growing rebellion with something like curiosity.
He stood against the final of his creations—tall, clad in burned obsidian armor, eyes burning red fire.
The first of the Flame-Reavers.
Not born, not Awakened—but shaped.
The King spoke:
> "Let them burn their fires."
>
> "Then bury them in darkness."