Chapter Nine
The doorway shimmered like heat on stone, neither open nor closed, but becoming. It pulsed gently, rhythmically, as if breathing. No one stepped through—yet all felt something crossing over.
Amira held her breath. Taru clung to her hand tighter.
Then the voice came—not loud, not booming, but ancient. Heavy with time. Gentle with memory.
"Who remembers the First Flame?"
No one answered at first.
Then Nnenna stepped forward, her body bowed by years but her eyes filled with light. "I do," she said, her voice quaking. "Not with my mind, but my marrow."
The voice replied:
"Then let the marrow speak."
Nnenna knelt before the doorway. Her staff glowed faintly. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, they were filled with fire.
She began to chant.
Words no one had heard in generations. Words born from the roots of the Lantern Tree itself. A language made of breath, blood, and memory.
And as she spoke, the flames inside the doorway twisted into shapes—faces—some familiar, some lost. All of them watching.
Elias gripped Amira's arm. "What is it?"
Amira whispered, "They are the First Ones. The ones who lit the covenant. The ones who bound the silence to the flame."
The faces inside the flame spoke in unison:
"You broke the mask."
"You named the lost."
"You remembered."
Taru stepped forward, no longer afraid. "Will you help us?"
The flames shimmered, then lowered.
"We do not help."
"We awaken."
The fire surged—and in that surge came visions:
A great war waged between song and shadow.
Children stolen from their names.
A pact made under a bleeding moon.
And a final covenant hidden in the bones of the land… still unbroken.
Amira gasped as the vision ended.
The flame whispered:
"One remains."
"One who carries both fire and silence."
"One who does not yet know they are the key."
The doorway pulsed violently, then began to close.
Taru cried out, "Wait! Who is it? Who's the key?"
But the flame only gave one final whisper, like a breath slipping into sleep:
"The one born beneath a sky of no stars."
And it vanished.
The villagers stood in stunned silence.
No stars?
A sky without memory. A place beyond maps. A child not born into the world—but between it.
Amira turned to Elias.
"I think… I've seen that sky."
Later that night, she sat beneath the Lantern Tree, the seed still glowing at her feet.
And she remembered—
—a child once abandoned on the riverbank.
—wrapped in a cloth with no name.
—eyes the color of old ash.
—her own reflection, staring back from a mirror pool in the spirit forest, holding that child.
And she whispered, trembling:
"It's me."