The Oath Circle still burned.
But it no longer blazed with the furious urgency of battle or the wild chaos of summoning rites. The fire had changed. It burned now with a slower, sacred rhythm—less like a flame of war, and more like a candle lit in mourning. The fire whispered instead of roared, curling upward in spiraling threads, each tendril woven with memory and reverence. It wasn't just heat—it was history. A fire not meant to destroy, but to preserve. It moved like breath, like ritual. The stone beneath it had darkened but not cracked. The flames did not consume. They communed.
