Title: Crimson Thrones: Volume 133 – The Child Who Remembered Fire
By Sabbir Ahmed
The child did not cry when the world looked upon them.
Born beneath an unremarkable sky, swaddled in linen untouched by flame, the infant watched Veyrath with eyes too old for flesh. The quiet fire danced around small fingers—not heat, not light, but memory. Magic that remembered what reality had tried to forget.
The Ashbound gathered in silence. They did not kneel. They listened.
"This one carries continuity," they whispered. "A bridge between what was sealed and what must return."
Queen Seraphine felt the pull instantly. Each step toward the child stirred echoes in her chest—names unspoken, moments lost, love once blazing brighter than restraint. She could not explain why the infant's presence steadied her, or why her hand trembled when the quiet fire brushed her skin and did not burn.
King Kaelen knew.
The fire reacted to him differently—flickering, resonating, as if recognizing a keeper of truths long buried. When his gaze met the child's, the world thinned. For a heartbeat, he saw everything Seraphine no longer could: the Convergence, the sacrifice, the love sharpened by danger. The fire pulsed, eager.
It wanted release.
That night, fractures opened across Veyrath—not wounds, but questions. Doors remembered being gateways. Rivers shifted course as if recalling older paths. The throne chamber breathed, waiting.
The Ashbound warned them: if the child awakened fully, sealed memories would return—not selectively, not safely. Love, betrayal, ambition, and grief would flood back into the realm's rulers and its laws alike. Balance would shatter… or evolve.
Seraphine stood between cradle and crown.
"If my memories return," she said softly, "will I still be who I am?"
Kaelen answered without hesitation. "You will be more."
But he did not say the rest—that the fire might burn him away, that the kingdom might demand a different sacrifice this time.
As dawn rose, the child laughed, and the quiet fire spread across the palace floor like a living sigil.
Veyrath remembered how to change.
And the next choice would not belong to kings, queens, or thrones—
but to the one who carried fire without flame.