Night lingered like a bruise when Elira and the rebellion's vanguard rode out of Southwatch. The city's forge-bells tolled a muted farewell; sparks drifted from chimney stacks, drifting upward like silent blessings. At Elira's side, Auren kept pace on a midnight-gray charger, cloak snapping in the wind.
Ahead loomed the Lathrian Range—jagged peaks older than any crown, said to house one of the last Flameborn sanctuaries: the Ember Gate. According to Mira's maps, its entrance had been sealed for a century, hidden inside a ravine so narrow that only dusk ever truly reached its floor.
Garran and half a dozen scouts led the column across charcoal-colored slopes. Every mile, Elira felt the new sigil on her hand thrum—like a compass made of ember. It tugged her west, toward the mountains' shadowed heart.
Yet dread followed close. Somewhere in those crags, the Obsidian Order prowled. Their cloaked hunters, wielding blades that devoured flame, had been spotted three days prior. Garran insisted they move at dawn's first light, when the Order's rune-blades were weakest.
By noon, the wind tasted of stone dust and frost. They dismounted at the ravine's mouth—a chasm split by time itself. An ancient archway, half-buried by scree, jutted from the cliff like a broken crown.
"If the Ember Gate still lives," Auren murmured, "it sleeps beneath that arch."
Elira approached, placing her palm against weather-worn runes. The sigil on her hand blazed. The rock glowed—lines of molten gold racing through cracks. With a groan, the archway yawned open, revealing a sloping tunnel lit by dormant sconces.
Torches flared to life as she passed, though no flame touched them. The mountain itself remembered.
The tunnel widened into a grand chamber. Stone anvils ringed a sunken firepit; vents in the ceiling spilled shafts of cold light. But the forges were dark—buried under rubble and silence.
A single figure knelt at the central anvil: Nyara Ember-Smith, the sanctuary's last guardian. Her hair, once copper-bright, was streaked with ash-white, but her eyes glowed the unmistakable gold of Flameborn.
"I felt the Thread stir," she said without rising. "I feared it was a death-rattle. Instead, you stand here—Flamebearer reborn."
Elira offered her hand. "Not reborn—rekindled. And we need your fires."
Nyara's gaze drifted to Auren, then to Garran's weary scouts. "You brought a prince and an army, yet your greatest need is not weapons."
She gestured to a half-collapsed shelf stacked with crimson ingots—fire-forged metal, humming with dormant heat.
"These are Embersteel," Nyara explained. "Once tempered, they can shield flame or channel it. They were meant as gifts to future Flameborn… but the future never came."
Elira felt the Thread pulse again—yes, these were fragments of the legacy she'd witnessed. Builders. Guardians. Not merely wielders of fire, but craftsmen of hope.
A horn blast echoed down the tunnel—one of Garran's lookouts. Before Elira could move, Nyara's head snapped toward the entrance.
"The Order," she hissed.
Black-cloaked silhouettes poured into the archway, rune-blades swallowing torchlight. Garran's scouts engaged, steel ringing against obsidian edges that sizzled as they struck.
Elira stepped to the firepit. "There's no time to forge." She pressed both palms into cold ashes. Her sigil blazed; dormant embers roared to life in a spiral of heat.
Nyara's eyes widened. "You would ignite an untempered pit? It could collapse the vault."
"Or seal it," Elira replied. "Buy us time to move the Embersteel and escape."
Auren drew his sword, watching the entrance choke with shadow. "Do it. We'll hold the line."
Elira exhaled a single word the First Flameborn had whispered in her vision—"Kindle."
Flames erupted, surging up the chimney-vents, turning the chamber into a crucible of crimson light. Shockwaves rippled through the stone; dust and sparks rained as buttresses groaned.
Nyara and Garran heaved crates of Embersteel toward a side passage revealed by the quake. Elira funneled raw flame into the collapsing ceiling, guiding the fall of rock like molten curtains. Obsidian hunters were forced back, blades sputtering in the unnatural inferno.
When the last of her strength wavered, Auren was there—one arm around her waist, dragging her into the side passage moments before the main vault sealed with a thunderous roar.
Darkness swallowed them. Only the Embersteel's faint glow lit their ragged breaths.
Nyara broke the silence. "You truly are the forge reborn."
Elira met her gaze, eyes still ember-bright. "Then help me make weapons that save—not enslave."
Nyara knelt, pressing her fist over her heart in the old Flameborn salute. "The Ember Gate is yours, Flamebearer."
Hours later, a hidden exit spilled them onto a ledge overlooking valleys awash in twilight. Below, campfires of the rebellion dotted the hills like newborn stars.
Elira held a single Embersteel ingot, its surface warm with promise.
"This was only one sanctuary," Auren said softly. "How many more lie waiting?"
Elira smiled, exhaustion fading beneath the thrill of purpose. "Enough to light the whole kingdom."
Far behind them, the mountain still glowed—an ember that refused to die. And ahead, the road wound toward other forgotten fires, waiting for the touch of a Flameborn who now knew she was more than a weapon.
She was the forge.