The descent into the Flamehold was unlike any path Duncan had walked before.
There were no stairs—only smooth obsidian, spiraling downward in a seamless helix. It felt less like a tunnel and more like a carved throat, sculpted not by hands but by some force of will that had burned its way into the mountain. The walls breathed warmth. The air tasted like coal and copper.
Each step Duncan took brought a new whisper—not in his ears, but in his blood. The Emberblade trembled in his grip, its light dim and flickering, as if hesitant to burn where it once raged.
Above him, he could already hear the distant clash of steel—the siege had begun.
Kael. Brannoc.
They were buying him time.
He clenched his jaw and pressed forward.
The Flame That Waits
At the base of the descent, Duncan found a gate.
Not metal. Not stone. But fire.
Pure, coiled flame shaped like a doorframe. It didn't burn the ground, nor cast shadows. It simply stood there—waiting. He approached, heart hammering. When the Emberblade neared, the flame parted, silent and smooth.
He stepped through.
The chamber beyond was vast.
Like the heart of a dead volcano, it stretched hundreds of feet across, rimmed by jagged rock and filled with a dull red glow. In its center stood a pedestal of obsidian, floating just inches above a pool of liquid ember. Upon it, resting without chains or guards, was an object Duncan had only seen in his grandfather's journals:
A crown.
Not gold. Not steel.
A crown of flame, shaped from molten ember that did not melt, flickering with old power. It hovered, spinning slowly, casting rings of orange light across the chamber.
The moment Duncan stepped forward, the chamber spoke.
"You've come."
The voice came from everywhere—and nowhere.
"As your blood did. As his did. And as his father's before him."
Duncan froze.
"You know me," he said.
"We remember you."
The flame shifted, curling upward behind the crown like wings unfolding from slumber.
"You are Flameborn. But you are also the final lock."
Legacy of Fire
Images surged through his mind—his grandfather, standing in this very chamber, the Emberblade planted into the earth. His face was younger, angrier. Desperate.
"I won't be your vessel," his grandfather had said. "I won't let you rise."
"Yet he failed," the voice said now.
The vision shifted—his grandfather overwhelmed by flame, falling to his knees, the crown slipping from his reach as Hollowed poured into the chamber.
"We allowed him to die. He was too weak."
Duncan gritted his teeth. "And me?"
"You are fire with thought. Rage with discipline. Pain made sovereign."
"You are ours—should you accept it."
The crown pulsed brighter. The chamber trembled slightly, as if exhaling.
"Take it. And the world bends."
"Refuse, and it burns."
A Choice of Sovereignty
Duncan approached the pedestal slowly.
The heat intensified with each step, but it wasn't just heat—it was memory. He saw the First Collapse. The Hollowed war. The burning of cities. The fall of old kings who had tried to wield the Ember Crown.
The voice tried again.
"You could end the war."
"Unite the wilds and the Empire."
"Command beasts. Crush your enemies. Rewrite the Empire's chains."
Duncan stopped an arm's length from the crown.
The flame no longer repelled him. It welcomed him.
He thought of the soldiers above—fighting, bleeding.
He thought of his father, his grandfather. Men destroyed by secrets.
And he thought of himself—not a king, not a god, just a soldier walking through fire.
"No," he said softly.
"I won't be a lock. Or a weapon. Or a god."
"I'll be the one who buries you."
And he raised the Emberblade.
Flame Against Flame
The chamber screamed.
Flame erupted from every crevice. The pool of ember surged upward like a serpent of molten fire, striking toward him. The crown rose higher, its light turning blood-red.
The blade answered.
For the first time since its forging, it roared—pure fire, blue at its edge, cutting through the false sovereignty like a sunrise through mist.
Duncan leapt, driving the Emberblade into the pedestal.
The crown shrieked.
Not breaking. Unbinding.
A column of fire exploded upward, piercing the mountain above. Rocks shattered. Walls cracked. The entire Flamehold trembled like a wounded beast.
And then—
Silence.
The crown, no longer alight, fell into the pool below. It did not float. It sank, without a ripple.
And the whispers stopped.
Return Through Ash
Duncan emerged from the Flamehold a different man.
The Emberblade no longer pulsed. It blazed.
But the world above was far from quiet.
As he reached the threshold of Ashgate, he saw the battlefield below—Kael's spear planted into the earth, surrounded by ash-covered Hollowed corpses. Brannoc stood at her back, bleeding from the shoulder, but alive.
When they saw him, they froze.
Kael's eyes widened. "You…"
She trailed off. Not from awe.
But from what stood behind him.
The mountain.
The peak of Ashgate had split, and from it now rose a single plume of blue fire—a beacon.
Duncan looked toward the horizon.
Smoke twisted there, far off.
The Eye may have been sealed…
But the world had seen the flame.
And something else was waking.