The embers may fade, but the curse does not sleep.
The air stank of smoke and burnt prayers.
The kind of stillness that followed slaughter not the peaceful silence of dawn, but the haunted quiet of aftermath.
Kaito stood alone at the edge of the cliff, overlooking the jagged valley below. His robe was torn, crusted in blood and ash. What little wind remained carried with it the final whispers of the monks who had raised him their chants now echoes in a graveyard of fire and stone.
He didn't cry.
He didn't scream.
He just stood, as if the weight of it all hadn't fully registered yet.
As if his body was waiting for his soul to return from whatever depths it had been flung into.
Behind him, the once sacred monastery of the Eternal Flame was reduced to charred ruins. Statues of gods cracked in half. Arches broken like ribs. Every candle, every scroll, every relic of peace and faith burned.
He had heard Yuna's scream first.
Then her silence.
Then nothing.
Nothing but the rush of power hot and cold all at once tearing through his spine like lightning laced with grief.
His knees buckled at the memory.
Hours Earlier:
Yuna had been the first to sense the shift.
A thick tension, like thunder without a storm. Her hand had touched Kaito's shoulder just before they opened the scroll the forbidden one, sealed behind twelve wax sigils. The one Elder Rinn had always told them to stay away from.
"You were never meant to read this," she had said, voice trembling.
But Kaito had no choice. The visions wouldn't stop. The dreams, the phantom voices, the flaming mark on his shoulder. Something inside him had already opened. He needed answers.
And the scroll gave them just not in the way he hoped.
"To the soul who dies but never rests
To the flame who burns in every age
You are cursed to remember.
And when you do, you must choose what burns."
Before they could finish deciphering the ancient runes, the monastery trembled.
And then the shadows came.
The Attack:
It was fast. Calculated.
A dozen cloaked figures slipped through the sacred halls like smoke. No war cries. No declarations. Just blades and whispers and the unmistakable sound of death.
Kaito had never seen men move like that. Their eyes glowed violet under their hoods. Their weapons pulsed with something unnatural like they weren't forged, but summoned.
He and Yuna fought side by side.
She had always been faster, smarter with her strikes. But it wasn't enough.
One of the assassins lunged for Kaito's back. She saw it before he did. She leapt, took the blade meant for his heart.
Blood exploded from her chest.
Her eyes never left his.
"You have to become more than this"
She collapsed into his arms, blood soaking into his lap, her mouth twitching with a ghost of a smile before it stilled.
And Kaito broke.
Or maybe, he awakened.
The Awakening:
The power roared to life within him like a scream held back for centuries.
His spine arched backward. His eyes rolled. His veins ignited.
He didn't cast a spell he became one.
Flames erupted around him in a perfect sphere, blue hot and unyielding. The intruders stepped back. One tried to reach him and turned to dust before their feet touched the ground.
He remembered things he couldn't possibly know. A war fought on a moonless plain. A tower built from bones. A woman with a mouth full of stars calling him Kael'tharion.
His name. One of them, at least.
Kaito collapsed after that, unconscious. When he awoke, the monastery was ash, Yuna was gone, and the only thing left unburnt was the scroll and the strange black ring that pulsed on his finger one he didn't remember wearing.
Now:
The wind pulled at him like invisible fingers, asking him to move.
To run. To forget.
But he didn't.
He knelt in the center of the circle of scorched earth where the oldest runes were carved. The stone beneath him still radiated with something ancient. Something alive. His fingers brushed over a familiar sigil the same one burned into his shoulder.
"One soul, many deaths.
One death, many flames."
The rune blinked once then vanished as if satisfied with his presence.
He felt the change again.
Not a burst this time. A slow ripple. Like a curtain being pulled away from his eyes.
Memories slid into place like puzzle pieces soaked in fire.
He saw a throne room of obsidian, where he'd once sat with a crown of black metal and a sword that sang with his heartbeat.
He remembered betrayal a brother with serpents for eyes.
He remembered being chained to a pyre, not with ropes, but oaths he had once sworn himself.
And he remembered choosing to burn.
Choosing to erase himself from history.
But here he was.
Alive again.
Elsewhere:
Beyond the veil of realms, in a chamber of crystal mirrors, seven figures gathered.
Each wore a mask carved from the skulls of forgotten beasts.
They watched Kaito through the Mirror of Whispers.
"Too early," one rasped.
"He remembers too early."
Another leaned forward, their voice ancient and tired. "The Flame never forgets for long. He is further than we hoped."
A third chuckled. Her eyes glowed silver through her mask. "Let him remember. Let him burn. The fun begins once he starts to ask the right questions."
"And if he finds the Emberborn?" one whispered.
A long pause.
Then:
"Then the war reignites. And this time, we finish what the gods could not."
Yuna's Farewell:
Kaito stayed by the ruins of the monastery all night. He buried what was left of Yuna beneath the only standing pillar, carving her name into the stone with a dagger made of flame.
He didn't know the spell.
The flame just obeyed.
"You saved me," he whispered. "And I wasn't worth saving. But I will be. I'll make it mean something. I swear it."
A bird landed on the headstone a raven with feathers laced in red ash.
It cawed once and flew away.
Kaito stood, the wind no longer chilling him.
The ring on his finger pulsed twice.
And far below the cliff, the forest began to glow with fire that did not burn, but called.