The kiss still lingered on Liora's lips.
Warm. Honest. Human.
But the earth beneath her feet told a different story.
The ruins shook with growing tremors — not from the Queen of Flame, but from something older. Something beneath.
Kael helped her to her feet as cracks spidered across the stone floor. The glowing runes on the walls flickered violently before fading into silence.
"Something's coming," Liora whispered.
Kael nodded. "Then we fight again."
"No…" she said, her eyes scanning the dust-filled chamber. "We run. We're not ready for what's down there."
A deafening groan echoed from beneath the temple — like stone grinding against bone.
Kael grabbed her hand. "Let's go."
They burst out of the ruins moments before the chamber collapsed behind them. A pillar of ash shot skyward. Birds fled from the trees. The wind shifted, heavy with the scent of something dead — but awake.
They didn't stop until they reached the ridge above the ruin.
From there, Kael turned to look back.
A crater had formed where the temple once stood. And in its center… something stirred.
A black, jagged crown — half-buried in ash — was rising.
Liora stared at it, horror blooming in her eyes.
"That's not my mother's magic," she said.
"That's His."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "His?"
Liora's voice trembled. "The First Flame. The one my mother tried to awaken. The one that created the curse in the first place."
Kael's grip tightened around his sword. "I thought he was dead."
"No," she said. "He was sealed."
She looked up at him. "And I think we just broke it."
They made camp that night near the whispering stream of Ember Hollow, beneath the charred boughs of silver-bark trees. Kael lit a small fire, carefully distant from Liora's own flames, as if unsure if the sparks would recognize each other — or clash.
She sat across from him, curled beneath her cloak, fire dancing quietly on her palm.
"I wasn't supposed to survive," she said softly. "Not after what my mother did. The curse… it was meant to end with me."
Kael looked at her carefully. "Why didn't it?"
She hesitated. Then whispered, "Because my father gave his life to split the curse in two — half of it sealed beneath the ruins… and half inside me."
Kael inhaled sharply.
"And now that seal's broken," she continued. "The First Flame will return. And it will come through me if I don't stop it."
Kael stood and crossed the fire to her side. Without asking, he knelt beside her.
"I don't care what's inside you," he said. "You saved me. You saved everyone back there."
"But what if next time I lose control?" she whispered. "What if I'm the one who burns everything?"
Kael looked into her golden eyes, the firelight reflecting in them like a memory.
"Then I'll burn with you."
Silence.
Then Liora leaned into him, head resting on his shoulder. And for that moment, the world seemed still — the kind of stillness only love, or doom, can bring.
But elsewhere, beneath the earth…
In the blackened crater, ash twisted like smoke as the crown fully emerged.
It was no ordinary crown — but bone, shaped by fire and hatred. And beneath it… eyes opened.
The First Flame had awakened.
But he was not whole.
Not yet.