Far from Ashgate, beyond the northern wilds and the fractured Dominion borders, lay a city untouched by war—Gildenspire, the Empire's jewel.
Marble towers shimmered in the dawn, and gold-veined bridges arched over quiet canals. Merchants hawked spices and silk, children played beneath statues of past emperors, and the city guards polished armor rather than stained it.
But in the western quarter, behind a manor that wore ivy like a disguise, war stirred.
In a vaulted chamber lit by candlelight and flickering soul-glass, a man kneeled before a crimson-robed figure.
"She broke the seal, my lord," the kneeling scout reported. "Flame was seen from the mountaintop. A beacon… too controlled to be natural."
The figure said nothing.
The silence stretched.
Then came the voice—refined, smooth, and honed like a blade dulled only by boredom.
"Who entered the Flamehold?"
The scout hesitated. "A lowborn officer. Duncan Blackvale. He—"
The man never finished.
A twitch of the robed figure's finger, and the air twisted. Blood streamed from the scout's nose, ears, and mouth. He crumpled, eyes wide with confused terror.
The crimson figure stepped over the body, his boots leaving no mark on the stone floor.
"Not lowborn," he whispered. "Not forgotten."
He pulled a scroll from the wall—an old document, charred at the edges, sealed with the Veiled Path's sigil: an eye within a spiral flame.
"Blackvale. That blood still lingers."
A Council of Smoke
Hours later, three others joined the chamber.
An old woman, veiled in mourning silk.
A masked knight, silent and ironclad.
And a pale youth with no shadow, who smiled too easily.
They sat around the obsidian table.
"He lit the mountain," the veiled woman murmured. "Ashgate was supposed to remain sealed."
"Your priests failed," the masked knight rumbled.
"My priests died holding back the fire you unleashed," she snapped.
The crimson envoy raised a hand. "Enough."
They fell silent.
He unfurled a map of the Wildfront. Upon it, new markers gleamed—scouting beacons lit by the Hollowed, tracks of beastkind moving in unnatural patterns, sigils that had no place in current Imperial doctrine.
"Duncan Blackvale has begun a spiral that cannot be undone," the envoy said.
The pale youth smiled wider. "Then we ride the spiral."
"No," the envoy replied. "We correct it."
He tapped a mark just north of Fort Thorne.
"There is an ancient forge buried beneath the Spine. Older than the Empire. Older than the Veiled Path."
He looked up.
"It's time we reminded the world what flame was truly meant to do."
A Rumbling Earth
Back at Fort Thorne, Duncan stood atop the wall, watching the mountain's blue flame still flickering in the distance. The Emberblade was sheathed at his side now, but it hummed with a new resonance—as if the Flamehold had altered its purpose.
Kael joined him, her arm in a sling, but her eyes sharp.
"No one's attacked in two days," she said. "Too quiet."
Brannoc strode up, tossing a gutted wolf carcass from his shoulder. "Even the beasts are pulling back. Something's scared them off."
Duncan nodded. "Because they felt what I saw. The Eye isn't just watching. It's calling."
Kael frowned. "To whom?"
He didn't answer right away.
Instead, he reached into his satchel and pulled out a small, silver disc—flat, unmarked, and pulsing with faint heat.
"I found this at the base of the Flamehold, embedded beneath the pedestal," he said.
Kael took it, turning it over.
"No runes. No Imperial glyphs."
Brannoc sniffed. "What is it?"
Duncan stared toward the east.
"A key."
Echoes in Gildenspire
In the Empire's heart, the crimson envoy moved through the cathedral halls of the Red Sigil Order, his robes whispering across velvet and ash.
Clerics bowed. Knights straightened. No one dared meet his eyes.
He stepped into a private sanctum beneath the cathedral—one not charted on any map.
There, in a chamber without doors, stood a creature not wholly human.
Bound in chains forged of silence and molten salt, it snarled as the envoy approached.
"You smell of fire," it hissed.
"I am fire," the envoy replied.
He held out the scroll bearing Duncan's name.
"This bloodline is the last key to the old dominion."
The creature's eyes burned. "You dare awaken what was sealed?"
The envoy smiled faintly. "He already did. I merely intend to finish the verse."
Unseen Watchers
That night, in Fort Thorne, Duncan dreamed.
He stood in a battlefield of ash. Armies moved like smoke, faces indistinct, banners made of bone and silence. Beasts walked among them—some familiar, others stitched from nightmares.
And above it all, a figure in crimson stood unmoving.
The envoy.
Duncan stepped forward, but the dream warped—pulling him into the ground, where flame burned not red, but black.
"Your fire is borrowed," a voice whispered. "And all debts come due."
He woke with sweat on his brow and the Emberblade humming against the bedframe.
Kael was already in the doorway, spear in hand.
"You felt it too," she said.
Duncan nodded grimly.
"They're coming."