## CHAPTER 17: _"The First Flame"_
The day after the scroll was torn, Elira woke in silence.
Not the kind birthed from fear—but the reverent stillness that follows revelation. People walked the streets slowly, whispering each other's names aloud, as if rehearsing remembrance. Elders wept in public. Children stared at their hands like they were meeting them for the first time.
The air still smelled of fire and ink.
But for the first time in a century—it also smelled of **hope**.
---
Lysia did not wake for three days.
She lay wrapped in linen and spellwoven silk, her skin etched with lightscars that pulsed beneath her collarbones. Arien never left her side. He kept a dagger by his hip and a book of her writings beneath her hand.
Orrin, along with the royal scribe, spent those three days translating the fragments of sky-ink left from her declaration. The spell had not just torn a scroll—it had written a new reality.
> "Do you understand what she's done?" Orrin said.
> "She became the quill," the scribe answered.
> "No," Orrin corrected. "She became the parchment."
---
On the fourth night, Lysia awoke.
Her first word was not Arien's name.
It was, "Flame."
> "What flame?" Arien asked.
> "The first one," she said. "The one they buried before Elira was born. The Archivist will return for it. We have to get there first."
---
It was called **The Ember Crypt**.
A fortress built beneath the Hollow Peaks, where the first magic fire was kept sealed in eternal night. Legend said it could not be touched by anyone with a throne in their heart.
Only the broken.
Only the scarred.
Only the real.
And so Lysia—still half-healed—rode at midnight with Arien, Orrin, and Mara. Each carried a piece of their own rewritten history.
The journey took them through the Vale of Moths, where flying insects hummed with memory. Each one whispered songs no longer sung in Elira. Lysia reached out to one.
It landed on her finger and sang her lullaby.
The one her mother had once sung.
She cried and laughed at once.
> "They remember," she said.
> "Because you gave them something to remember from," Arien replied.
---
At the edge of the Hollow Peaks, they found the Guardian of the Ember Crypt.
She was not armored.
She was old.
Wrinkled, blind in one eye, and leaning on a cane carved from obsidian flame.
> "Only those who have burned may pass," she said.
> "I've burned," Lysia replied.
> "Then show me your fire."
Lysia bared her back.
The scars formed runes.
Each a name.
Each a truth.
The Guardian bowed.
> "The flame is yours to carry. But beware—whoever lights it may not survive the warmth."
> "That's always the cost," Lysia whispered.
---
Inside, the Ember Crypt was a cathedral of ash.
Pillars of coal. Ceilings of soot. And in the center—a flame hovering over a pool of obsidian.
It flickered not like fire—but like breath.
Alive.
Waiting.
Lysia stepped forward.
The others held back.
> "Why is she alone?" Mara asked.
> "Because she's the only one who was erased," Arien answered. "And still came back."
Lysia knelt.
> "You are the First Flame," she said. "They feared you. Buried you. Tried to write over you. But you burned anyway."
> "I know what that feels like."
The flame leaned toward her.
Touched her forehead.
And entered her.
Her eyes lit with gold.
Her blood warmed to fire.
Her voice changed.
> "I am not just cursed," she said. "I am chosen."
> "And I will not let them silence us again."
---
Outside, snow began to melt.
Far away, in the Archivist's shadow-lair, the second scroll snapped open on its own.
A single word appeared in red:
> **Flame.**
The war had reignited.
But this time—it had a spark that couldn't be undone.