Chapter 49
The winds changed again.
But this time, it wasn't the gods.
It was the absence of them.
Virelle, Deyth, and Callin had vanished—faded like smoke into realms beyond reach. They hadn't died. Gods didn't die so easily.
They withdrew.
Because for the first time in recorded eternity, someone had rejected divinity… and still remained whole.
Eliendara stood at the edge of the mountain, the True Crown silent but steady upon her head. The fire no longer surged wildly. It breathed with her now.
Balanced.Untamed.Unowned.
She was not a vessel.Not a gate.Not a goddess.
She was Eliendara Flameborn—and no name beyond that mattered.
Kael walked beside her as they descended toward the capital.
"You don't feel… different," he said.
She looked at him. "I feel more myself than I've ever been."
"You're not afraid? Now that there's no path written for you?"
"I'm still afraid," she said. "But it's mine to carry. Not the gods'. Not prophecy's."
Kael nodded, though the shadows in his eyes lingered. "Good. Because something's not right."
She turned sharply.
"What do you mean?"
They returned to the city at twilight. The people had gathered in the central square, where the False Flames once ruled.
They bowed to her—not in fear, but recognition.
But one man, hooded and still, did not kneel.
He stood at the far end of the crowd, staring straight at her with eyes too old to belong to any mortal.
And in his gaze… she felt heat.
Old.
Ravenous.
Wrong.
Later, in the council chamber, Ravien unrolled a scroll sealed with forgotten wax. His hands trembled.
"This… this wasn't supposed to exist anymore."
"What is it?" Eliendara asked.
He looked up.
"A name erased from time. A god that the others buried before the first flame was ever born."
She frowned. "Why would the gods hide one of their own?"
"Because he didn't offer power to mortals," Ravien said. "He devoured it."
The scroll glowed faintly.
A single name emerged—burned into the parchment.
VALTHERON.
In the temple ruins, the hooded man from the crowd removed his cowl.
He had no face.Only flame.Coiled in endless spirals, flickering between gold, black, and red.
He lifted one hand, and a child near the courtyard fell to her knees, gasping. The fire within her dimmed—taken.
Valtheron's voice was not heard, but felt.
"She has the True Crown."
"Then she is the only one left who remembers how to burn."
"And she will be the last."
Eliendara woke in the middle of the night, a scream on her lips and fire trembling beneath her skin.
But it wasn't her fear.
It was a memory.
Not hers.
His.
A god she'd never met, but who had left a mark deep in the roots of flame itself.
And now… that mark was stirring.
🔮 Next Chapter Preview – Chapter 50: The God Who Ate Fire
A new threat rises—one not bound by prophecy or law.
Valtheron, the first flame-eater, walks again.
And he does not want to rule the world…
He wants to consume it.And Eliendara may be the only fire he cannot swallow.