The wind within the stone circle had changed. The twenty-five had spoken, their voices still lingering in the still air like heat after a fire. And there, suspended between breath and time, the candle hovered—an impossibility wrought by will and ancient flame.
Velastra stood still, watching it. The sacred candle pulsed softly, silver and blue, its wax both translucent and rooted in shadow, as if it had been poured from the essence of midnight. She didn't need to be told it was alive. It knew her. It waited.
Her grandmother—Kaeth, the Last Bell—raised her hand and gestured toward the heart of the circle, the place between the twin rings of carved stone.
"Come forward, Ash-Shene," Kaeth said, her voice the gentle toll of a final chime. "The path must be taken freely."
Velastra stepped between the rings. The carved lines beneath her feet lit up, one by one, pulsing outward with a radiant blue that seemed to seep into her skin. She felt it then—not just light, but memory. Each symbol hummed as though whispering the names of long-lost things.
The Watchers encircled her with silent reverence, not a single breath wasted. Orren did not speak. He simply watched her with the stillness of a mountain.
Kaeth walked to her, carrying a ceremonial vessel cradled in both hands. It held the candle now resting above the stone, as if the ritual had conjured it from memory, from myth. Carefully, she took the candle and placed it in Velastra's palms.
"Do you feel it?" her grandmother asked.
Velastra nodded. The candle was warm—not hot, but alive, like the slow thrum of a sleeping heart.
"This is the Candle of Sainara," Kaeth whispered. "It does not burn for light. It burns for truth. For longing. For love beyond time."
A slow wind rustled the robes of the Soul-Watchers.
Kaeth continued, her voice now carrying the gravity of centuries. "Sainara lies between death and the waking world. It is not a resting place. It is not a punishment. It is where the souls untethered by fate drift—forgotten, lost, or hidden. They are not dead, but they are no longer called by the living. And those souls do not die nor perish; they stay there waiting to be claimed."
Velastra's fingers closed tightly around the candle. Her heart pounded faster.
Orion.
Cael.
"You may name only those you seek, and the candle will identify them," Kaeth said. "No soul may be brought back unless it is called by the heart and answered by the flame."
Kaeth lifted her hand. From within her sleeve, she drew a curved blade of obsidian and ashwood. She turned to Vorran—a tall, silent figure wrapped in crimson veils—and with a nod, stepped to the edge of the circle.
"Blood must recognize the path," he said.
With the blade, he cut a shallow line across his own palm and let the blood fall—just a single drop—onto the stone. The moment it struck, the twin rings ignited with spectral fire. Not heat. Not light. Something older.
Kaeth turned to Velastra once more.
"While we chant, you will pray. When you pray, do not use your voice. Use your soul. If your plea is sincere, the candle's flame will turn blue. Only then may you pass."
Velastra stepped to the very center now, alone.
She dropped to her knees.
The candle trembled in her hands.
At first, she felt only silence. Then the weight of memory came crashing in. The look in Cael's eyes when he tried to identify who he was facing. The way Orion used to hum to himself when he cooked. The terrible sound of a woman's laughter unraveling when she'd accepted the bag of pearls.
Tears fell without restraint.
She bowed her head, clutching the candle close to her chest.
And she prayed.
Not with words, but with the ache in her ribs. With the shape of their names in her breath. With the thousand broken pieces of her trying to stitch together a path across worlds.
A spark.
The flame flared.
Blue.
The light grew so fierce that the circle disappeared into it, the stone and the sky above swept in a swirl of sapphire and white. The watchers did not move. They only watched.
The soul-watchers spoke once more, voice low and final:
"The veil is lifted. The seeker is true. Let her cross."
The blue fire engulfed Velastra—not burning, but unraveling her shape, like thread pulled loose from a tapestry. She gasped but did not resist. Her body melted into light, into silence, into memory.
Then there was nothing but blue.
And she fell into Sainara.
Her descent was soundless.
There was no sky. No ground. Only endless space tinged in deep indigo, dotted with soft pulses of light, like stars that had never been born. The air was heavy here, not with gravity, but with something else: longing, perhaps. Or the dreams of those who never woke.
The candle floated beside her, its blue flame constant.
She was drifting.
No sense of time.
No pulse but her own.
Then came the voice—not a voice, not truly, but an impression. As if the candle itself breathed the words into her:
"Find the ones you named. Do not call any other. Calm your heart, and in my very light, every soul fire reflects its owner's eyes. Avoid touching others' souls. For each light you touch that is not theirs, a piece of you will be left behind."
Velastra turned, searching.
The souls shimmered in the distance, some flickering brightly, others barely glowing. Millions of them, suspended in the silence between worlds.
She floated forward, candle in hand.
And the search had begun.