They rode north under moonlight.
Twelve riders. No banners.
No royal insignia.
The mountains loomed for days — jagged teeth against the horizon.
Villagers along the road refused to speak of the northern peak.
Some crossed themselves.
Some shut their doors.
By the fifth night, even the soldiers grew uneasy.
The air thinned.
Birdsong vanished.
The wind carried heat despite the snow.
On the seventh night, they reached it.
The mountain's summit glowed faintly red through cracks in black stone.
Smoke curled upward like a sleeping creature exhaling.
One rider dismounted.
"Your Majesty… we should not go further."
Vaelrion stared at the summit.
"My queen would have."
No one followed him past that point.
He climbed alone.
The stone grew warm beneath his boots.
Then hot.
At the cavern's mouth, heat rolled outward in waves.
Inside—
The earth pulsed.
Like a heartbeat beneath rock.
And at the center of the cavern—
Flame.
Suspended in air.
White at its core.
Crimson at its edges.
It did not flicker.
It breathed.
He felt it before it spoke.
The pressure.
The awareness.
You came.
The voice was not sound.
It was thought.
"I did."
You seek to undo death.
His throat tightened.
"Yes."
The Flame pulsed brighter.
Death is a door. I can reopen it.
His heart thundered.
"Bring her back."
Not as she was.
The cavern walls trembled.
But she will breathe.
Hope is a dangerous thing.
"What must I give?"
The Flame expanded.
Filled the cavern.
Only what you already are.
The heat surged forward—
And entered him.