The roads to Aythrel had grown dangerous.
Once a neutral trade hub, its pathways now bore the stains of ideology. Red ash marked Flame-Bound patrols. Gold ribbons fluttered from the branches where David's scholars passed through. Marran's sigils were rarer—hidden under rocks, burned into the backs of trees, carved into the tongues of dead animals left by the roadside.
I walked with Eve, David, and a small delegation—three from each sect. Not as a god.
As a witness.
Aythrel stood at the convergence of five rivers, its homes built on stilts above slow-moving water. Its people wore no sigils, and they welcomed us not with song or banners, but wary eyes and silent nods. They remembered the old gods. They remembered what happened when faith grew teeth.
We were not welcomed as saviors.
We were tolerated as storm clouds.
We met in a longhall that smelled of salt and wet stone. The elders of Aythrel formed a circle—thirteen in total, none young, none armed. Around them, the walls bore relics from the First Empire: sun disks, rusted blades, broken idols from a dozen fallen gods.
David spoke first.
"We come not to convert, but to preserve. The fire has divided, yes—but the embers must remember their origin. We offer peace. Mutual defense against the Ember Crown. Dialogue over dogma."
Kael scowled beside him.
"We waste time. Marran poisons the river paths. Every moment we wait is another village drowned in his corruption. What peace can exist without the will to purge it?"
Eve said nothing.
Instead, she stepped forward, reached into her satchel, and scattered a handful of black sand across the floor.
It shimmered. Moved.
And then, it spoke.
In a dozen voices. Old. Twisting. Alien.
"Faith feeds more than belief. Your flame has called. And we answer."
The elders reeled back. Some spat. One crossed herself in the sign of the Old Pantheon.
I stepped forward, placing my hand over the sand. It cooled beneath my touch, fell silent.
"What did they see?" I asked Eve.
She trembled. But her voice was clear.
"They saw the thing beneath Aythrel. The thing that remembers when gods were still ideas."
That night, the elders confessed:
The land beneath Aythrel was not natural. Long ago, something fell from the sky. Not a star, but a mind. It embedded itself deep below, and from it sprung the rivers. The old empire built over it, studied it, then abandoned it when the water began to speak in dreams.
The Aythrelites had kept the secret, fearing that worship would awaken it.
And now, our war had stirred it.
"You three," one elder said, pointing at me, at Eve, at David, "You are not merely kindling. You are summoning."
"Summoning what?" David asked.
"Judgment."
At dawn, the waters receded from one of the rivers. An unnatural drought, sudden and absolute. The riverbed revealed a path of stones—leading to a sunken archway of bone and glass.
Aythrel called it the Vault of Shards.
The elders asked one of us to enter.
I volunteered.
Eve tried to stop me.
"It wants to see what you really are," she said.
"So do I."
The light disappeared as I crossed the threshold.
The air hummed.
Inside, the walls whispered. Not in words, but in memory. They showed me fire not as salvation, not as destruction—but as language. Every act of flame was a sentence, a prayer, a scream.
I saw myself, split in two.
One form radiant, eyes of gold.
The other hollow, crowned in ash, walking through the ruin of the world, flame dripping from its fingers like poison.
A question rang through me:
"Which are you?"
I did not answer.
Because I was both.
And that was the truth.
The flame inside me did not roar.
It listened.
I emerged from the vault after what felt like days. It had been hours.
The river had returned. The elders waited.
"You are not the first god to walk the valley," one said. "But you may be the first to learn."
They offered us a pact.
Aythrel would remain neutral, but host any summit of the faiths. No violence within its bounds. No declarations of dogma. Only memory. Only listening.
David agreed.
Eve nodded.
Kael said nothing.
He stared out across the river, toward the black smoke rising from the west.
"They will not wait for summits," he muttered. "Marran builds his crown. And war answers faster than flame."
I looked toward the smoke too.
And I wondered what waited beyond the valley.
Because now I understood:
The war of faith was not the end.
It was the beginning of a greater reckoning.
One that even fire could not contain.