The landscape shifted the moment they left Emberwake.
Where the outpost had been surrounded by relics and fractured memories, the land ahead was raw and brutal—uncharted by any cartographer, untouched by any map, and unhealed by time. The very air crackled with something ancient. Wrong. The Divide wasn't just a place; it was a wound.
Riley walked first, her senses alert, the fire inside her unusually quiet. Daphne followed a step behind, her gauntlet humming softly, tracking electromagnetic fluctuations in the terrain.
The tracks they followed weren't of rail or road. They were echoes scorched into the stone—memories of feet that had come before them, too light to leave footprints but too full of purpose to be forgotten.
They didn't speak for the first mile.
The silence between them was no longer emptiness—it was understanding. The Soul Link made words optional, and when they did speak, it was to narrate the strange: shifting sand that turned to glass under their boots, spires of rock that wept sparks, whispering winds that carried names neither had said aloud in years.
"They're watching us," Daphne said finally.
"I know," Riley murmured. "They've been watching since Emberwake."
"Not Kaelira's kind."
"No." Riley narrowed her eyes at the ridge ahead. "Skuldrith."
The terrain grew more hostile with each step. Blackened roots clawed their way out of dead earth. Trees hung upside down from invisible canopies. Gravity bent in places. The ground remembered trauma—and refused to heal.
They reached the edge of a massive scar in the land by nightfall. It stretched for miles, glowing faintly with internal light. A chasm opened before them, miles wide, filled with shifting fog and whispering flame. The Divide.
Riley crouched near the edge, holding her palm toward the void. "It's not just a gorge. It's alive."
Daphne nodded. "It's absorbing echoes. Sound. Time. Memory."
"And it's growing."
They camped near the cliff. That night, the fog parted only once. Just enough to show them what waited inside:
A tower. Burned. Falling. And a figure inside it screaming.
Not Riley. But someone like her.
"We have to go in," Riley said.
Daphne said nothing at first. Then quietly: "We may not come out the same."
"Good."
Crossing the Divide required sacrifice. Not of blood—but of memory.
The Echo-Born had spoken of this. The only way through was to let the fog take something. A part of your story. Something personal. Something real. Otherwise, the Divide would reject you.
"What will you give?" the mist whispered as Riley stepped forward.
She closed her eyes. Thought of Owen. Of the boy she used to be. His wildness. His jokes. His endless questions.
"I give my doubt," she said.
The fog surged.
She stepped in.
Daphne followed.
"I give my guilt."
The mists closed.
They emerged not minutes later—but days. At least, that's how it felt. Neither could say what had changed, but something in their fire had deepened. Tempered.
The world on the other side was worse.
Buildings had melted into the ground. Statues wept ash. The sky bled light that didn't cast shadows. And at the heart of it all, they found a survivor.
A girl, no older than sixteen, buried beneath a collapsed dome of fused bone and steel. Her flames were nearly out.
Daphne freed her. Riley ignited what remained of the girl's spark.
The girl gasped, then screamed. Her name burst into Riley's mind without language.
"Tova."
Another Echo-Born.
She spoke in broken images, her memory fractured by time loops. She had been bonded. She had fought. She had died—and not.
"The tower," she whispered. "It keeps the first fire. The Mother Ember. He's trying to burn it backwards."
"Velrax?" Riley asked.
Tova nodded. "He wants the beginning. Not the end."
With Tova in tow, they pressed deeper into the ruins. Strange signals filled the air—part mechanical, part musical, like old lullabies sent through fractured speakers.
Daphne mapped the pulses. Riley translated the frequency shifts.
They were being guided.
By the third day, they found it.
The base of a once-great spire, now cracked and leaning. Burned bodies—long dead—lined its base, preserved in poses of prayer or defiance. The tower from Riley's visions.
But the top was still intact.
They climbed.
Each level presented a memory trial.
First, Riley saw her old bedroom—neat, perfect, untouched by war. Her mother's voice called her name.
"Stay," the voice said. "Just for tonight."
But she walked through it.
Next, Daphne saw her first lab—clean, sterile, filled with laughter and notebooks.
The place she had first dreamed of changing the world.
"Fix it," the voice begged. "Don't break the rules."
She moved on.
At the top, they found a flame.
Small. Unburning. Singing.
The Mother Ember.
It pulsed as they approached, lighting the tower's crown with soft golden-red light. Tova collapsed to her knees.
"It's... waiting."
"For what?" Riley asked.
Tova looked at her.
"For you."
Riley stepped forward.
And the flame leapt into her chest.
It didn't burn. It remembered. Everything. The first war. The first Chosen. The forging of the Soul Link. The first betrayal. The loss of Kaelira's faith.
The birth of Velrax from her discarded flame.
Tears welled in her eyes.
The fire inside her wasn't just hers. It was the last spark of the world Kaelira had once loved.
"Now what?" Daphne asked softly.
Riley turned.
"We go back."
"To Emberwake?"
"No." Her voice was clear. "To Nova Veil."
"Why?"
"Because if Velrax wants to rewrite the past..."
She raised her flame.
"Then I'll burn a future he can't touch."
And so began the long walk back—three of them now.
Toward the war that never truly ended.
Toward the gate that had never truly closed.
Toward the story only fire could finish.