The name echoed through the wind like a promise, or perhaps a curse. Serai. Amira tasted it on her tongue—a name too sacred to speak, yet too haunting to forget.
She had heard the legends from her grandmother beneath the Baobab Tree. The winged flame that guarded the threshold between memory and forgetting. Serai—who once stitched stars into the sky until she burned her wings trying to mend the fabric of fate.
Now, her name had returned. And with it, the sky wept a new kind of sorrow.
In the Flame Chamber
The woman without eyes guided Amira into the Flame Chamber, where golden embers floated mid-air like suspended prayers. The walls were alive—breathing with the stories of those who came before, voices pressed into stone.
"You must remember her," the woman said. "Or she will fall completely from the sky."
"Serai?" Amira asked, her voice trembling.
"She is not just a guardian. She is the mirror of your soul. And the flame you carry now—that's hers."
Amira touched her chest, and for the first time, she felt it: a flicker. Small. Ancient. Awake.
Kelu stepped forward, eyes glowing with the opal shimmer. "She left part of herself inside you. That's why the sky calls your name when it breaks."
Mirror of the Past
Back on the surface, Damaris had begun speaking to someone unseen.
"She's remembering too fast," he murmured. "If she awakens the Loom Flame before the Ninth Tide, we'll lose everything."
Morya crouched beside him, watching the horizon darken. "Do you think she's ready?"
"No," Damaris said. "But the sky no longer waits."
Echoes in the Dark
Deep in the chamber, Amira reached out to touch the central flame.
Visions struck her in blinding waves:
Serai, wings aflame, trying to hold the torn sky together with nothing but song.
The old gods, retreating into silence as the earth cracked.
A lighthouse, long buried in ash, still pulsing with Elias's light—waiting.
Amira fell to her knees, gasping. The flame had not burned her—but it had marked her.
The woman without eyes placed a hand on her shoulder.
"You are the sky's final memory," she whispered. "And the last keeper of Serai's fire."
Final Lines of the Chapter
Outside, the stars blinked out—one by one.
In the East, the silhouette of a winged figure rose against the dying moon.
Not falling. Not flying. But watching.
And from her lips came a voice like thunder wrapped in velvet:
"Amira… don't let them forget me again."