The borders of Orethrael shimmered under the late autumn sun, not with heat, but with memory. From the Tower of the Remembering Flame, light pulsed outward in slow waves, each beat carrying the stories etched into its foundation. Names whispered in the wind, names of the dead, of the fallen, of those forgotten by Marran's doctrine.
And across the river—the once-quiet Wyrmstream, now blackened with charred driftwood—rose the banners of the first legion of Velmorrath.
That was the name they gave to Marran's kingdom now.
Velmorrath: the Nation of Silent Fire.
It had no anthem. No song. Only rhythm—bootfalls, scrolls snapping open, voices raised in cold chant. Every soldier was branded at the wrist with the Crown of Flame. Their armor was lacquered ash, their helms closed without slits. They moved as one, as if thought and command had long since merged.
They did not need to see.
They remembered instead.
And we remembered too.
The fields west of the Fold had become silent.
Civilians had been evacuated into the valleys and deeper groves. The Tower of the Remembering Flame continued to rise, slower now, but with deeper purpose. Pilgrims still came to carve their names, their histories, their grief into its body.
But below that tower, in the shadow it cast, we—the sentinels of Orethrael—gathered.
Kael's Varkaan stood first, blades bare, their skin faintly glowing where fire pulsed beneath flesh. Serit led them in a circle, blades crossing, eyes closed, murmuring not war cries but names of every Flame-Bound who had fallen.
David's Ashen Lore watched silently, cloaked in ash-grey robes that seemed to flicker with phantom scripts. Each carried a tome or etched tablet, their eyes glazed in reflective trance. They whispered memories into the dirt, binding land and word as one.
The Soryel, Eve's dream-born kin, did not stand. They floated—barely a breath off the ground, eyes luminous. The wind responded to their breath. Their voices layered like overlapping hymns.
And yet, tension rippled beneath our unity.
It began that morning, hours before the scouts returned with news of Velmorrath's advance.
David summoned me alone.
He wore ceremonial black, his eyes heavy.
"They cannot be trusted," he said, voice low. "Kael and his Varkaan speak only of counterstrike. Of righteous ash. They are already at war in their minds."
"And you?" I asked.
"I am at war, yes—but against forgetting. Not for glory. This fight must be remembered rightly, not as a slaughter."
I did not reply.
Later, Eve came.
She arrived barefoot, her voice distant, caught between waking and prophecy.
"You must not let them split," she said. "The Varkaan, the Lore, the Soryel—we were not born to divide. If we do, Marran wins without fire."
She collapsed before I could answer. Her forehead burned with flame-script:
"When the Flame Remembers Only Itself, It Burns All."
We held council.
Not in the tower, but in the roots beneath it.
Kael came armed. David came with scrolls. Eve, still pale, let the Soryel speak through her voice.
"We were not made the same," Kael said. "We cannot pretend otherwise. Let the Lore bind the aftermath. Let the dreamers prophesy. But war? That is ours."
"You speak as though you own truth," David countered. "As if only fire through blade is real. What of consequence? What of meaning?"
"We cannot mean anything if we are dead," Serit hissed.
Eve's eyes opened, unnatural and silvered.
"The flame does not belong to you," she said. "It is not yours to wield, Kael. Nor yours to define, David. It is his—" she pointed at me, "—and he must decide what it will become."
They turned to me.
I did not speak.
Instead, I walked to the edge of the grove, where the river sang of war.
And there I knelt.
And called the fire.
It did not come as light.
It came as weight.
A silence so total it deafened. Then heat—not burning, but heavy, like pressure beneath the world. The ground cracked in lines. The trees bowed. The wind fled.
And then it came.
Fire—not of destruction, nor creation, but division. The line between will and weakness. Between loyalty and vengeance. A flame that demanded definition.
From that flame I spoke:
"We are not three peoples. We are one nation. You will not divide yourselves by past form. You are Orethrael."
The fire struck the ground around me in a circle.
And within it, their names etched themselves:
Varkaan. Ashen Lore. Soryel.
One ring. One kingdom.
And they bowed.
At dawn, Velmorrath crossed the river.
No trumpet. No warning. Just fire.
It swept over the first ridge like a judgment, black and low, too cold to be natural. The air it touched crumbled to frost. It was fire inverted—flame that consumed heat, not gave it.
Marran's first act of war was not to kill.
It was to erase.
The Varkaan met them first. Kael did not shout. He burned.
From his shoulders rose a mantle of living fire, his blade lit not with heat but memory. Every time it struck, it sang with the voices of those who had died before.
The Ashen Lore followed, stepping across battle lines, their tomes open, casting memories as shields and echoing loss as weapons. They shattered the enemy's rhythm, turning their chants against them.
Then the Soryel came.
They did not move in lines. They drifted between firestorms, speaking dreams into armor, unraveling orders before they were spoken. Soldiers of Velmorrath turned on each other, lost in visions.
I stood above them all, on a hill of stone, my hand raised.
When I lowered it, my flame fell like night.
And the valley ignited.
Not in destruction.
But in remembrance.
Every strike my people made carried a name. Every flame that touched enemy ranks bore the grief of a hundred fallen villages.
We did not fight to conquer.
We fought to remember what was taken.
And Velmorrath, in all its machinery, could not understand that.
They fell back by twilight.
Not routed.
But shaken.
Not by strength.
By meaning.
When the last of Marran's legions retreated across the blackened Wyrmstream, silence fell.
Not victory.
Not yet.
But proof.
That Orethrael was no longer a whisper in a forgotten field.
It was a kingdom of fire.
And the flame had chosen to remember.