They say the past is a dead thing.
Buried. Gone. Powerless.
But in the southern reaches of Valtheon, the past was rising again
And it was very much alive.
🔹 Departure from Zareth
Three days after my last encounter with High Inquisitor Laevra, I stood at the edge of the Skyspear Gate one of Zareth's rarely used dimensional portals, hidden beneath layers of illusions. Few initiates ever saw it. Fewer were allowed to use it.
But I wasn't an ordinary initiate anymore.
I was Arkon's weapon now.
And Zareth was sending me into the world.
Arkon appeared beside me in a shimmer of smoke. He held a small obsidian shard wrapped in crimson runes the Pyra Compass, a relic designed to track disturbances in the Flame's ley-lines.
"You'll head to Vhal Arak a ruined city at the empire's edge," Arkon said. "It was once home to a Pyra'Nahl enclave… until the Circle wiped it out a century ago."
"So why is it glowing with magic again?" I asked.
"That's what I need you to find out. If someone is awakening the remnants of the Forbidden Flame… you must be the first to know."
He paused.
"And if what stirs there is older than fire itself… you must destroy it."
The wind picked up. The gate began to hum.
I looked back once at the towering spires of Zareth, at the only world I'd known since my reincarnation.
Then I stepped through the gate.
And vanished into ash.
🔹 Vhal Arak: The City of Burned Bones
The portal spit me out in a broken landscape.
A dead city.
Vhal Arak.
Once a thriving sanctuary of the Pyra'Nahl Order, it now stood in ruins black stone buildings cracked by time, statues shattered by magic, and streets covered in layers of soot that never stopped falling.
The sun here was dim. The wind was dry. And the air the air tasted like old fire.
I moved carefully, guided by the Pyra Compass. Its runes pulsed brighter the deeper I went. I passed crumbling shrines etched with fire glyphs, old Pyra'Nahl murals scorched into walls, and piles of bones untouched, unburied, still blackened from flame.
The Empire didn't just destroy this place.
They erased it.
But something remained.
A sound caught my ear soft, metallic. Not wind. Not echo.
A whisper.
"Flame-bearer… flame-bearer…"
I turned sharply, flame flaring to my fingertips.
No one there.
Only shadows dancing near a ruined well.
"You're not alone here," I muttered.
And I was right.
🔹 The Guardian of the Ruins
Deeper into the city, I reached what remained of the Pyra Sanctum a massive domed hall, half-collapsed, half-buried beneath scorched rubble.
The Compass pulsed like a heartbeat.
Inside, the air was heavy. Dense with mana. It felt alive.
Then I saw her.
Kneeling beside an altar of black stone cloaked in ash, face hidden beneath a hood was a woman. Thin, motionless, but unmistakably alive.
She didn't look up.
She spoke first.
"I felt you coming… like a storm behind the hills."
"Who are you?" I asked, flame forming instinctively in my palm.
"I was once called Selira, Flame-Binder of the Last Pyra Council."
She rose slowly, pulling back her hood.
Her skin bore ember-markings deep red veins of mana flowing through her neck and arms. Her eyes… her eyes burned with living fire.
"You survived the purge?" I breathed.
"I did more than survive," she said. "I hid the last embers."
She pointed to the altar. It wasn't a tomb.
It was a seal.
And it was cracking.
🔹 The Flame Wraith
Before I could ask more, the ground trembled.
The altar split down the center.
From within erupted a wave of corrupted fire black and violet, screaming in tongues not spoken since the world's first wars.
Selira pushed me back.
"It's too soon! The seal has weakened too much he's waking!"
"Who?" I demanded.
"The first of the lost. A soul twisted by betrayal. A warrior of the Pyra who turned against his own."
A shape emerged from the altar.
Tall. Wrapped in burnt armor. His eyes glowed like dying stars.
A Flame Wraith.
Corrupted by centuries of rage.
His voice was a hiss of broken glass.
"You… wear the fire… but you do not bleed it…"
"I don't need your approval," I growled, igniting both palms.
The Wraith raised a hand and the entire room burst into spectral flame.
🔹 Battle of the Forgotten
I charged.
Fire met fire.
His was darker. Older. Twisted by hatred.
Mine newer, rawer but alive.
He struck with chains of flame. I countered with a barrier of spiraling runes.
His blade sliced through memory itself warping reality around us.
I fought back with the Pyra'Nahl spin-strike, a maneuver from my past life that came to me not through training but instinct.
We clashed in firelight.
Ash and magic rained like a storm.
Selira chanted in the background, trying to stabilize the seal, but the Wraith was growing stronger with every passing second.
Then… I made the mistake of hesitating.
He pierced my shoulder magic wound open and raw.
"You are still weak," he hissed. "Still not worthy."
But the wound… triggered something.
Pain.
Memory.
The moment I died in my last life. The betrayal. The final scream.
And the fire within me erupted.
I roared and unleashed the True Flame not red, not gold, but white.
The Wraith stumbled. His form cracked.
"No… not that flame… not again…"
And with a final blast, I burned him into smoke.
The chamber went silent.
🔹 Aftermath
Selira knelt beside me, placing a hand over my wound. Her touch was warm, filled with a kind of ancient sadness.
"You carry his soul," she whispered. "Kael's. The last flameborn."
"I carry more than his soul," I said, breathing hard. "I carry his purpose."
She looked at the broken altar.
"Then you must know the truth. Vhal Arak was not the end. It was the beginning. There are others. Survivors. Flames scattered across the world."
"And the Circle?"
"They hunt them still. But if you gather them… if you unite the embers…"
She looked at me, her eyes glowing with a dangerous hope.
"You could reignite the Pyra'Nahl Order."
I stood, gripping the Compass, its light now blazing.
"Then that's exactly what I'll do."