POV: Ariya 🩸🔥🕊️
The inner sanctum was unlike anything Ariya had ever seen.
No fire. No smoke. No darkness.
Only stillness.
And light.
Pillars of white stone stretched high into a circular dome carved with ancient runes. Flames hovered in the air — not red or gold, but soft blue, as if frozen in motion. A pool of liquid silver shimmered at the chamber's center, and above it, carved into the wall, was a mural.
Not of war.
But of unity.
Twelve figures circled a single flame, their hands reaching in.
One of them — a woman with a crown of sparks — held a child.
Ariya stared at it.
"That's… her," she whispered. "The First Flamebearer."
Jax scratched his head. "I thought she was supposed to be some sword-slinging, fire-throwing rebel queen."
"She was," Lyra murmured. "But this… this looks like a family."
Kael stepped toward the mural. "Look closer."
The woman wasn't just holding the child.
She was giving it away.
To the shadows beyond the circle.
"Why would she—" Ariya started, then stopped.
Because the answer was already whispering in her blood.
She stepped to the silver pool.
And without hesitation, dipped her fingers in.
The world shifted.
Suddenly, she stood in the past.
Not fully — just her mind, drifting through memory.
She saw the First Flamebearer — tall, scarred, beautiful — holding her newborn child in trembling arms.
"They'll come for her," a robed figure said. "The flame lives in her now."
"Then she can't stay," the Flamebearer whispered, tears in her eyes. "She must grow far from this war."
The baby was handed to a cloaked man.
Velkar.
"Swear to me," the woman said, voice breaking. "She will know nothing of me. Of this."
"I swear," Velkar said. "She will live… as Ariya."
The vision vanished.
Ariya gasped, falling back from the pool.
Kael caught her.
"What did you see?" he asked.
She didn't speak for a long moment.
Then, her voice cracked.
"It was me."
"What?"
"I'm not descended from the Flamebearer," she said. "I am her blood. Her child. Her only heir."
Silence fell over the chamber.
Even Jax didn't joke.
"So you're… a direct link to the First Flame?" Lyra asked.
"Yes," Ariya said. "And she wanted me hidden. She never meant for me to awaken this power."
"Why?" Kael asked, stepping close. "To protect you?"
"No," Ariya said, voice shaking. "Because the power isn't pure."
She turned toward the mural, eyes locked on the shadows receiving the child.
"She wasn't just a Flamebearer. She was bound to something else. Something darker."
"Then that thing's in you too," Lyra said softly.
Ariya nodded.
"Yes."
A breeze flickered across the chamber.
The flames shifted.
And a voice — old and sorrowful — echoed:
"Your blood holds creation… and ruin."
Ariya's mark burned, the sword at her back humming in warning.
Kael took her hand without a word.
"So what now?" Jax asked, quietly.
Ariya looked toward the next passage — a spiral of firelight and shadow.
"Now we find out what else she left behind."
"And what I'm meant to become."
Far away, Ruvan knelt before a mirror.
Inside it, a face stared back — not his own.
But hers.
The First Flamebearer.
"She knows," he murmured.
"Then," the voice replied, dark and cold,"It is time to claim what belongs to us."