The Cradle responded.
Heat surged through the chamber, but it was not destructive. It was alive. The walls glowed brighter, the ancient runes igniting like a chorus. The flame around Eira danced, forming shapes, echoes of the Mageborn who had built this place. Their stories lived in the light, flickering scenes of creation and loss: cities rising, then falling to ash; a woman holding a child marked by fire; a final circle of mages casting a spell so deep it twisted the bones of the world.
Eira staggered back from the pedestal, breath shallow. But the flame did not leave her. It followed, hovering close, surrounding her like a mantle. Her shard no longer pulsed with warning, but with purpose.
A voice deeper than memory stirred inside her.
"You are the spark. The legacy. The warning."
She didn't understand all of it but she didn't need to. She could feel the truth burning inside her now. The Cradle hadn't just been a sanctuary. It was a weapon. A memory. A seed waiting to ignite.
And she was its match.
—
Above, the battle faltered.
The courtyard was slick with mud and blood. Smoke curled from shattered walls, and cries echoed through the stone like ghosts. Lena knelt behind the archway, blood streaming from a cut across her temple, healing spell trembling in her hands as she pressed it to a wounded child's chest.
Kaela fought like a storm. Fast, brutal, relentless. Her blade cleaved through one enforcer, then another. But the numbers kept coming. For each one that fell, two more emerged from the treeline.
Torin had run out of arrows. He fought with a broken spear now, leg braced awkwardly, shoulder bleeding. He laughed through the pain, teeth red. "Didn't expect to go out this pretty."
Thorne moved like a shadow through firelight, silent, deadly, cutting down enemies before they even raised their blades. But even he was beginning to slow. They all were.
And then the earth trembled again.
Different this time.
Not a warning but a call.
—
Light burst from the stairwell.
Not white. Not gold.
The color of burning marrow. Of old fire, sacred fire.
It rippled outward like a heartbeat. Every Veil soldier near the dais fell back, hands to their ears, groaning as the pressure in the air changed. The brazier in the courtyard exploded upward in a pillar of light and then it expanded, a circle of flame that stopped just short of the villagers and the defenders.
Inside the circle, the Veil could not pass.
Inside the circle… stood Eira.
Her eyes glowed faintly. Her clothes were scorched, her hands streaked with ash. But she stood tall. Still.
Changed.
The flame didn't burn her—it cloaked her. Wind twisted through her hair, and in her outstretched hand floated a fragment of the ember bowl, flickering with that ancient heat.
Thorne stared at her, stunned. "Eira?"
She turned her gaze to him, and for a second, something in her looked too old for her face. But then she smiled, faint and human.
"I remember now."
Kaela was the first to step forward. "What is this?"
"A ward," Eira said. "One the Mageborn left behind. One only blood could wake."
The Veil's line had broken. They had pulled back, regrouping beyond the trees.
But Maelis remained.
She stood alone at the edge of the circle, her hood drawn back, face flushed with fury. "You think old fire can stop what's coming?" she spat. "The Veil has a sun of its own now. And we burn hotter."
Eira stepped closer to the edge of the ward, her voice calm. "Then let's see which flame remembers longer."
Maelis lunged.
But the circle flared.
Flame, real and ancient, surged up like a wall, hurling her back.
When the fire dimmed, she was gone. Retreated. But not defeated.
—
Later, after the flames died down, after the wounded were tended and the courtyard fell into exhausted quiet, Eira sat beside the ruined dais.
Thorne approached her silently, and this time, he sat close. Not as a shadow. Not as a weapon.
But as someone who had almost lost her.
"What happens now?" he asked.
Eira looked toward the crater where the flame had first risen. "The Cradle woke for a reason. It wasn't just protecting us. It was warning us."
Thorne's jaw tightened. "About what?"
She met his eyes.
"Whatever they've built… it's not just a weapon. It's unnatural. And it's tied to the same magic they tried to erase."
Lena approached then, Kaela and Torin behind her. The villagers gathered nearby, quiet but watching.
"The Veil will come again," Kaela said. "Sooner than we think."
Eira stood slowly. "Then we go to the Wellspring next. It's the only place left that might know how to stop them."
"And the Cradle?" Torin asked.
She looked down at the cracked stone, then back at the people around her.
"It's not a hiding place anymore."
She turned her back on it and began walking east.