CHAPTER VII
The Blood of Ember and Thorn
The ravine into which Alaric and Lysa fled was a wound in the skin of the world, a jagged scar torn open by ancient upheavals when fire and ice had wrestled for dominion over the newborn mountains. Its walls plunged steeply downward, their black stone glazed with frost and streaked by veins of pale crystal that glimmered faintly in the half-light. Wind moaned through the narrow chasm like a grieving spirit, carrying with it the distant clangor of horns and the relentless rhythm of marching feet.
The Cult of the Broken Flame was in pursuit.
Alaric ran until his lungs burned and his legs trembled, the cold air tearing at his throat. Snow and shards of ice crunched beneath his boots as he followed Lysa along a narrow ledge that wound downward in a treacherous spiral. Above them, the sky was already darkening, though it was still early in the day, as if the light itself recoiled from the shadow that had begun to spread across the world.
They did not speak. There was no breath to spare for words.
Only when the ravine widened into a cavernous cleft, its floor lost beneath a field of broken ice and fallen stone, did Lysa signal for them to halt. She pressed herself against the rock wall and raised a hand, her eyes closed, her brow furrowed in concentration.
"They are close," she whispered. "Closer than I hoped. They have trackers—beasts bound with fire and shadow. They follow the resonance of the First Seal… and now, yours."
Alaric felt the mark upon his chest pulse faintly in answer, a dull warmth beneath the cold. The memory of Pyraxis's words echoed in his mind: The world's ancient powers will know you for what you are.
"I didn't ask to be a beacon," he muttered.
"Nor did the seals ask to be broken," Lysa replied softly. "Yet here we are."
A low, bestial growl rolled through the ravine, reverberating off the stone. It was not the voice of any natural creature, but something deeper, layered, as though fire itself had learned to howl.
"They've loosed their hounds," Lysa said. "We must move—now."
They pressed on, descending into the cleft's shadowed depths. The temperature dropped sharply, and the air grew thick with frost. Their breath steamed before them, and the crystals in the walls glowed more brightly, responding to the growing cold.
At last, the path opened into a vast chamber where the ravine intersected with a network of ancient tunnels. These passages were different from the Deep Ways they had traversed before. Their walls were rougher, less refined, as though carved by water and ice rather than by dwarf-hammers and dragonfire. Stalactites of blue-white ice hung from the ceiling like the fangs of some colossal beast, and the floor was a frozen mirror, treacherous and slick.
"The Frost Tunnels," Lysa said. "They run beneath the Ironspines and connect to the glacial halls of the northern elves. If we can reach them, the ley-lines of cold may mask your… resonance."
Alaric nodded, though his thoughts were elsewhere. The vision at the Seal-Tower, the voice of Pyraxis, the burning sigil upon his heart—all of it swirled within him like a storm seeking release.
They had not gone far into the frost tunnels when the first of the cult's hunters emerged from the darkness behind them.
It was a thing of nightmare.
Its body was that of a great wolf, but wrought of blackened scale and sinew threaded with molten light. Flames guttered in the cracks between its armored plates, and its eyes burned with a malevolent, cunning intelligence. As it moved, its paws left smoldering prints upon the ice, which hissed and steamed in protest.
A fire-hound.
Then another appeared, and another, until a pack of them filled the tunnel, their growls echoing like distant thunder.
"Run!" Lysa cried.
They fled deeper into the labyrinth of ice, the fire-hounds close behind. The air grew hotter with each passing moment, the unnatural flames of their pursuers warring with the cold, filling the tunnels with choking steam.
The path narrowed, then forked. Lysa took the left passage, dragging Alaric with her. They skidded across the slick ice, barely keeping their footing as the ground sloped downward into a steep chute.
Behind them, the fire-hounds lunged.
One leapt, its jaws snapping shut inches from Alaric's heel. Instinct flared.
He turned, raising the star-forged dagger, and something within him answered.
Heat surged through his arm, down into the blade. The runes along its length blazed, shifting from blue to white-hot gold. Without fully understanding what he did, Alaric slashed.
A ribbon of fire, bright and pure, leapt from the dagger's edge and struck the nearest hound. It howled—a sound of fury and pain—and staggered back, its scaled hide scorched black.
Alaric stared at the blade in shock.
"I… I didn't—"
"There's no time!" Lysa shouted. "The ice bridge—there!"
Ahead, the chute opened onto a vast chasm spanned by a narrow arch of frozen stone. Below, darkness yawned, and from it rose a cold so intense it seemed to sap the strength from the air itself.
They raced across the arch. The fire-hounds followed, their burning weight cracking the ice beneath their paws.
Halfway across, the lead hound unleashed a jet of flame. The arch shuddered, fissures racing through it like lightning.
"Jump!" Lysa cried.
They hurled themselves forward as the bridge collapsed in a roar of shattering ice and steam. The hounds plunged into the abyss, their howls fading into the depths.
For a moment, there was only silence and the sound of Alaric's ragged breathing.
They lay upon the far side of the chasm, trembling, their clothes rimed with frost. Slowly, Lysa pushed herself up.
"You wielded flame," she said quietly. "Not as a mage… but as blood answers blood."
Alaric looked at his hands. They were unburned, though the memory of heat still tingled in his veins. "It felt… natural. As if I were not calling the fire, but remembering it."
Lysa studied him with a mixture of awe and unease. "Then the Emberline legacy is awakening in you faster than Elyndor feared."
They rested only briefly, for they knew the cult would find another path. The Frost Tunnels twisted onward, leading them toward a chamber where the ice thickened and the crystals in the walls shone with a cold, blue radiance.
There, at the heart of the frozen cavern, they found something that made Lysa gasp.
A figure knelt upon the ice, motionless.
At first, Alaric thought it was a statue, carved with exquisite detail. Then he saw the faint rise and fall of its chest.
It was a woman, clad in the tattered remnants of ranger's green and silver. Her dark hair was streaked with frost, her face pale but unmistakably familiar.
"Father," Alaric whispered.
Edrin Thorne lay before them, blood staining the ice beneath him, his breath shallow and uneven.
Alaric rushed to his side, dropping to his knees. "Father! You're alive—"
Edrin's eyes fluttered open. When he saw his son, a faint, weary smile touched his lips. "So… the Fire-Road has claimed you too, has it?"
"What happened?" Alaric demanded. "The north—Graywatch—"
"Gone," Edrin said softly. "Cryomor's shadow fell upon it, and the walls of stone meant nothing to ice older than the kingdoms. We fought. We bought time. But the sky itself turned against us."
He coughed, and blood stained his lips.
Lysa knelt beside them, her hands already glowing with healing light. "He's been touched by frost-wyrm breath," she said. "And by darker wounds. I can slow it, but not mend it fully. Not here."
Edrin's gaze shifted to her, then back to Alaric. "Your mother… Lyria… I swore to tell you when the time came. It seems the time has come sooner than I wished."
Alaric's throat tightened. "You said she was a healer. From the western woods."
"She was that," Edrin said. "And more. She was Emberline. One of the last who still carried the true forge-blood, the legacy of those who bound dragonfire into steel and law. She loved the world enough to stand against both dragon and king when they strayed from the old pacts."
His eyes grew distant. "They hunted her for it. The cult. The remnants of the Flame-Lords. That is why we hid. Why we took the name Thorne. Why we lived as if we were no one of consequence."
Alaric felt the truth of it settle into him like a second heartbeat.
"She knew," Edrin continued, "that if the seals ever weakened, her blood would be called. And through her… yours."
A deep rumble echoed through the tunnels, distant but growing.
"They are coming," Lysa said. "Not just hounds this time. Something greater."
Edrin grasped Alaric's wrist with surprising strength. "Listen to me. The Crown of Ash… your mother believed it could either save the world or doom it. She believed that only one who carried both the fire of the dragons and the loyalty of mankind could wield it without becoming a tyrant."
"Why are you telling me this now?" Alaric asked, his voice breaking.
"Because I may not have another chance," Edrin replied. "And because you must know who you are, before the world tries to tell you what you must become."
The cavern shook as a distant roar rolled through the ice, vast and terrible, like the awakening of a glacier given voice.
Lysa looked toward the darkened tunnels, her face pale. "That is no mere beast. That is a servant of an Elder Dragon."
Alaric felt the mark upon his chest flare, hot and bright, as if answering a call from beyond the mountains.
The Blood of Ember and Thorn had awakened.
And the world, long held in uneasy balance, was beginning to burn and freeze in earnest.