The holy brazier had not burned in a year.
Its iron bowl had rusted. The ceremonial oil long spoiled. Yet at dawn, the villagers of Elmsfall awoke to find it blazing—bright, hungry, and **blue**.
Not gold.
Not white.
**Blue.**
It pulsed like a heartbeat.
Children pointed. Elders crossed themselves. Mothers pulled their little ones closer. And in the silence that followed, Priest Dalan stood at the temple door, unmoving, his face pale.
He hadn't lit it.
He couldn't.
Only one person in Elmsfall knew the truth.
Kael watched the flame from the edge of the square, arms crossed, his hood low. The fire crackled strangely, as if whispering. No one else seemed to notice it. But he did.
He could feel its rhythm.
> "It's syncing with the leyline beneath the temple," he murmured. "Drawing from the fracture."
Last night's ritual had awakened more than memories. It had stirred the **essence roots** buried deep in the land—roots that answered not to prayer, but to **will**.
His will.
A connection had formed between Kael and the sleeping arcane veins of the world. And now the land was responding.
> "I didn't mean to light the flame," Kael thought. "But part of me… did.
By midday, the village was unraveling.
Rumors spread like wildfire.
> "It's a sign from the gods!"
> "No—it's a curse! Harlan died, and now this!"
> "It's the boy. The one who came back from fever. He's not normal!"
Kael returned to his hut under whispers and stares. Even his adoptive father, Thorne, looked uneasy.
"You see what you've done?" Thorne whispered harshly. "They're saying you were in the temple. That you lit the flame."
Kael didn't answer. He was too focused—listening.
Not with ears, but **essence sense**.
Something new had entered the village.
Not a Wraithborn.
Not corrupted.
Something **clean**.
And dangerous.
That night, the stranger arrived.
He came on foot. No horse. No pack. Just a long black coat and a staff capped with a silver spike. His hair was short, ash-blonde. His eyes glowed faintly with the sheen of mage-sight.
He entered the temple. Uninvited.
He asked no questions.
And when he emerged, he said only one thing:
> "Someone here is manipulating leylines."
---
Kael watched him from the rooftop of the old grain house, cloaked in shadows. He recognized the staff. The robes.
A **Mage-Hunter**.
They were rare. Feared. Trained in the ruins of the Empire to hunt rogue spellcasters. They did not serve kings. They served only balance.
Kael had once **created** them.
Now they hunted his kind.
The hunter's name was Erynd Korr.
He spent the next morning quietly questioning villagers. Every person. Every home. But his questions were always the same:
> "When did the flame begin?"
> "Did you see anyone near the temple that night?"
> "Has anyone recently survived a fever?"
By midday, he was standing in front of Kael's hut.
Thorne answered the door.
Kael stood behind him, silent, calm.
Korr looked directly at him. Eyes narrowed.
> "What's your name, boy?"
Kael met his gaze.
> "Kael."
> "You were ill?"
Kael nodded once. "A fever. I woke three days ago."
Korr's eyes lingered on him for too long.
Then: "Do you remember anything from your dreams?"
Kael's breath caught for half a second—but he didn't blink.
> "Only fire."
Korr smiled, but there was no warmth.
> "That's the one element you can't fake."
---
That night, Kael returned to his Shadow Root.
The flame within him burned hotter. Stronger. His grimoire now whispered to him—glyphs forming in his mind like pieces of a puzzle.
But the hunter's arrival meant one thing: **he had stirred too much, too soon.**
Kael knelt in the circle, and for the first time since awakening, he whispered a name.
> "Serana."
The name felt like glass in his mouth.
His first betrayer.
His first student.
And the one who now sat on the **Council of Flame**, miles away.
> "If the hunter's here, it won't be long before she hears I'm alive."
He placed a hand on the earth.
> "Then let her come."
The Shadow Root pulsed.
The flame turned violet.
The Warden laughed beneath the hills.