The wind had shifted.
The guards felt it. The elders felt it. Even the golden wards that lined the Hall of Purity flickered as if uncertain whether they should stay lit.
The gates opened just after the second bell.
And in walked a man older than memory.
High Priest Caelen of the Northern Temple.
His robes shimmered with celestial embroidery, his staff pulsing with energy so ancient it made lesser priests avert their eyes. His presence was quiet—but it shook the air with a pressure no one dared question.
He walked into the Sanctum and said one thing:
"Let her go."
The Circle of Flame objected.
They shouted. Demanded proof. Cited laws passed down since the Time of the Veil.
But Caelen raised one hand, and all fell silent.
"I have seen what lies beyond the veil of the present. A storm approaches—one that will split the sky and silence gods. Fire and void will burn as one, and the girl you bound in chains… she stands at the center."
Gasps echoed like thunder through the chamber.
"She is not corrupted," he said, turning his eyes to Arielle's cell. "She is marked. And she is the only one who may survive what comes next."
"Survive?" one of the senior priests whispered.
Caelen looked at them, gaze as sharp as steel.
"No. Save us."
They released her that evening.
Her chains were undone. Her robes restored. And her room prepared again at the western wing of the temple.
But the girl who returned was not the same one they exiled.
Arielle stood taller. Spoke less. Prayed harder.
And at night… she didn't sleep.
One week later…
The bond had begun to whisper.
Not in words—but in power.
She felt it during healing rituals—when the light around her hands turned silver at the edges. She felt it in the sparring grounds—when a flame erupted too hot, too fast, and scorched the stone black. And she especially felt it when she tried to pray the memory of his voice away… and ended up shaking, drenched in sweat, her magic crackling around her in wild circles.
Something was changing.
Not in her soul.
In her magic.
And the answer, she knew, lay in the riddle.
"The girl with no shadow."
She found her answer in whispers.
A forbidden name tucked in old sermons. A mention carved into a broken wall in the east wing. An abandoned door beneath the scriptorium with a glyph no one could read.
She waited until the temple slept.
And then she slipped inside.
The Hidden Archives.
Dust thick as silk. Rows of scripture stacked like bones. Books wrapped in ash-stained cloth, humming softly. The air was sharp with the scent of ancient ink and sealed secrets.
Arielle's holy fire flickered as she walked deeper—and then flared, brighter than ever before.
But it wasn't holy anymore.
Her flame—normally gold—now glowed silver-blue, edged in something darker, deeper.
It didn't burn pages.
It illuminated them.
She found the text by accident—or fate.
A torn volume with no title, bound in metal thread.
And on the first page:
"The Girl With No Shadow"
The first flamebearer who touched the void and lived. Marked by light. Bound to the darkness. Hunted by the heavens.
The book whispered when she touched it. Not words.
Emotion.
Regret.
Fear.
Desire.
Ruin.
And something else.
A mark on the corner, drawn in black wax:
The same symbol that appeared on her chest the night she summoned Riven.
Her breath hitched.
She didn't know what it meant yet—but she knew this:
The Order was wrong.
The gods were hiding something.
And the girl with no shadow…
Might just be her.
---
-The next morning-
The temple bell hadn't struck yet.
But Arielle didn't wait for permission.
Her robes swept across the marble floors like a storm brewing beneath cloth. Her power flared with every step—barely contained, no longer obedient. Priests whispered. Novices bowed. Elders stepped aside.
She walked straight into the sanctum chamber.
Straight into Caelen's presence.
The High Priest sat cross-legged beneath the stained-glass window of the star-born gods, eyes closed in meditation.
Until her fire pulsed.
And he opened his.
"I need the truth," Arielle said, voice sharp with thunder. "No riddles. No revelations spoken in tongues."
Caelen tilted his head.
"You saw something."
"I saw the future," he murmured. "Or what may become of it."
"And I was in it."
"You were the only one left standing."
The silence that followed pressed against the walls.
Arielle took a step closer. "I've read the forbidden texts. The girl with no shadow—that's what I am, isn't it?"
Caelen's face remained unreadable. "A title. A myth. But yes. I believe the prophecy refers to you."
"Then what does it mean?"
His voice softened, as if the weight of it hurt to speak.
"She is the one who stands between flame and void. The one the heavens cast aside… and the darkness refused to claim."
Arielle's chest tightened. "That's not an answer."
Caelen looked up.
And for the first time, she saw it—fear in his eyes.
"I saw you walking through fire… untouched. I saw stars falling from the sky. I saw angels weep and demons kneel. I saw Riven… broken. And the gods…"
He faltered.
Her voice dropped. "What did they do?"
He whispered:
"They turned their backs."
Arielle staggered a step back, the chill racing down her spine sharper than any blade.
"You mean to say I become something they fear?"
Caelen said nothing.
Only reached into his robe and drew out a fragment of his vision—an ancient relic etched with flame and void intertwined, a perfect circle ruptured by a single name:
Arielle.
And underneath it:
When the girl with no shadow stands between the broken and the breaking, the flame will choose.
"The flame will choose?" she echoed. "What flame? What breaking?"
His answer was a grave one.
"I don't know."
Arielle turned, her thoughts spinning like a cyclone.
So she was the girl without a shadow.
Chosen and cursed.
Saved and feared.
But the prophecy was incomplete. The answers were dust.
And for every step forward, the road only grew darker.
As she walked away from the sanctum, something inside her whispered:
"You asked for the truth. But are you ready for what comes after?"
-Weeks later-
Arielle had expected his presence to hunt her but it didn't.
Not anymore.
There were no whispers. No flickers of shadow at the corners of her dreams. No silk-tongued riddles echoing through her flame.
Riven was gone.
And she was… grateful.
He was a mistake. A ghost conjured by desperation.
Whatever bond had formed between them, it was quiet now. Buried.
And Arielle refused to dig it back up.
She woke before dawn, trained until her hands bled, chanted until her voice cracked, poured her focus into flame and form and discipline. She was more priestess now than ever before.
And that part of her—
That shadow-touched part—
Was finally still.
Or so she told herself.
But peace had a strange weight to it.
She noticed it in how the other mentors watched her—too intently, like they expected her to fracture.
She noticed it in the texts—the way they suddenly stopped helping. Every record of the prophecy led nowhere. Every mention of the girl with no shadow ended in blank pages, ripped bindings, sealed scrolls.
Even the relic High Priest Caelen had shown her was gone.
She asked the archive keeper.
He only shrugged. "Never heard of it."
She didn't believe him.
Then came the training.
Different now.
Sharper.
Longer.
She wasn't just memorizing sacred chants or healing the sick. Now she was sparring with elite sentinels, performing rituals that summoned more flame than she'd ever held, enduring days of silence and meditation that left her wrung out and hollow.
They said she was being prepared.
Chosen.
But she had never been trained like this before.
And it had all begun… the moment Caelen arrived.
At first, she welcomed the discipline. It gave her direction. Purpose. It gave her something real to fight for again—not riddles and shadows and forbidden desire, but truth. Devotion. Power she could name.
But even as she flourished, doubt crept at the edges.
Why her?
Why now?
What had Caelen really seen?
And what were they training her for?
She asked Caelen again.
"What are you preparing me to become?"
His answer was quiet, too careful.
"The flame must be tempered. What is forged must first survive the fire."
It wasn't an answer.
Not really.
And that night, when she closed her eyes, she didn't see Riven.
She saw a battlefield.
Broken wings.
And flame that refused to die.
Still, she slept easy.
Because he was gone.
And she was in control again.