Cassian couldn't sleep.
Even after returning to his chamber—small, cold, tucked in the western annex like an afterthought—he could feel the eyes of the Tribunal watching him still. Not just the twelve robed judges, but something older, deeper. Something watching from behind the fire.
The chamber's walls were damp and cracked, and the candle on his desk had long since burned down, leaving only the smell of smoke and wax. His cloak lay abandoned over the chair. He stood before the mirror, shirtless, staring at the space between his collarbones. The skin there was untouched—but he felt it.
That ember inside him, the one that had awakened during the Trial, had not gone back to sleep.
It pulsed quietly in his chest, like a second heartbeat.
Like it was… waiting.
He tried to meditate. He tried to pray. He even whispered a plea to Lysander's godless wisdom, to the Twelve's unknowable doctrine. Nothing answered.
Until—
Toll.
A single, hollow bell broke the silence of midnight.
Cassian's eyes widened. The bell hadn't rung during this hour in years—not for death, not for war, not even for festival. It was a forbidden sound.
Toll.
Again it echoed, this time louder, deeper, shaking dust from the rafters.
Cassian stood. His breath caught. The ember in his chest flared, as if awakened by the sound. It knew the bell. And Cassian knew where it was coming from:
The old tower. The one the Church had sealed.
His bare feet hit the stone. He didn't think—he couldn't. He threw on his cloak, grabbed nothing else, and left his chamber behind. As he stepped into the cold corridor, the silence swallowed him whole.
The Church was sleeping.
But the flame was not.
The Path to the Tower
Cassian moved like a shadow through the stone labyrinth. Hallways he'd memorized in childhood blurred past. The sconces along the walls had been dimmed for nightfall, their cold embers casting long, tremulous shadows.
He passed the chapel where the stained-glass saints stood frozen in judgment. He passed the dormitories, where the youngest slept, dreaming of divine futures. He passed Lysander's study—but paused.
Behind the locked door, he sensed something.
A slow, ancient exhale.
The scroll was gone. Burned. But its mark had not faded.
He kept moving.
Through the side courtyard, past the overgrown garden that no one tended anymore. Past the rotted statue of the First Flamebearer whose name had been scratched out of every history book. Until finally—
There.
The old tower.
It loomed at the edge of the Church's borders, where the divine light supposedly did not reach. Cracked stone. Rusted chains. Vines curled like veins along its surface. It was an eye, sealed shut by the Church, never meant to open again.
The door stood open.
Cassian stepped through.
Inside the Tower
The air changed instantly. It smelled of iron, ash, and old parchment. The kind of ancient, decayed air that pressed on your lungs and whispered secrets you weren't meant to hear.
A spiral staircase greeted him, winding up into darkness.
He ascended.
Each step creaked and groaned beneath his weight. Some were half-broken, jagged with rust and rot. But the flame inside him flared brighter with each floor, guiding him like a candle in the void.
The sound of the bell had stopped, but its echoes had not. They lived in the stones. In the cold that nipped at his fingers. In the way the air hummed with something just beyond the veil of reality.
Finally, he reached the summit.
The Flame's Chamber
The tower's peak was a ruined observatory.
A broken dome revealed the starless sky. Shards of stained glass lay scattered like dead butterflies across the stone. A circle was etched into the floor—no, not etched. Branded. The stone around it was scorched black, cracked, as though it had once held something too powerful to contain.
And at the center of it all—
A pedestal.
On it, a brazier.
Empty.
Cassian stepped forward, breath slow. The ember in his chest now roared, a silent scream pushing against the confines of his ribs. It wanted this place. It belonged here.
And the flame knew what to do.
He dropped to one knee before the brazier. Closed his eyes. Let his hands rest on the cold stone. He didn't speak aloud. He didn't have to.
He simply let go.
Let the Flame Bloom
The warmth inside him surged like a tide breaking a dam.
First, it moved through his spine, an aching heat that unfurled vertebra by vertebra. Then it spread to his arms, his legs, his fingertips—until even his breath felt like it sizzled with fire.
And then—
The ember bloomed.
A sound like a heart cracking open filled the air.
His chest burned—but it didn't hurt. No, it was something else.
It was liberation.
Flames burst from his sternum—not wildly, not in violence. They flowed like golden petals unfurling in slow, majestic rhythm. No ordinary fire—this was not red, nor orange, nor even divine gold. It was living fire, threaded with crimson veins and pale-blue edges, flickering in patterns like ancient script.
The brazier drank it in.
The entire chamber glowed. The air shimmered, like reality was warping. Gravity bent, the stone floor pulsing beneath him like a beating heart. He saw, just for a moment, fractures in the air itself—like the world had been scarred.
And the flames—his flames—bloomed into a crown above the brazier.
The shape of a blooming flower, each petal made of flickering fire.
The Flame That Remembers.
Cassian collapsed forward, breathing hard. The fire had not left him—but it had shared something. As if it had offered a piece of its truth.
Visions Through the Bloom
A warmth enveloped his vision—and suddenly he saw.
Not the present, not the tower—but something before.
A battlefield, cloaked in smoke. Figures wreathed in fire, wielding weapons made not of steel but of living flame. One knelt at the center of the carnage, their hands outstretched, holding a single burning flower.
That same bloom.
Then—a chamber. Grand. Old. The true Tribunal. Not twelve robed figures, but thirteen, each a walking pyre. Each with a crown of fire like his own.
One turned. Looked directly at Cassian.
"You returned to us," she whispered.
"Do you remember your name?"
Back in the Tower
Cassian gasped.
The vision shattered.
The flames flickered once—then settled into the brazier. Not dying. Waiting.
He looked down at his hands. His veins shimmered faintly with red light, fading slowly, as if the bloom had left a trace beneath his skin.
He was no longer the same. The ember had grown into a flame—and the bloom was only the beginning.
Then he heard it.
Footsteps.
From the stairwell below.
He turned, body tense. Had someone followed him? Another Inquisitor? A shadow of the Tribunal?
But as the figure stepped into the moonlight of the ruined observatory, he recognized them.
The girl with lavender eyes.
Her expression was unreadable. She stepped forward, her gaze locked on the brazier.
"So… it finally bloomed," she said quietly.
Cassian stood. "What is it?"
She met his gaze, her voice soft but unshakable.
"The First Flame. The one they tried to kill. The one that remembers everything the Church has forgotten."
"And me?" he asked.
"You're not chosen," she said. "You're a piece that was stolen—and now returned."
Cassian stepped back. "What does that mean?"
She looked past him, toward the brazier. "It means the game has started again. The Tribunal will come. Others will rise. And the Church…"
She smiled, not kindly.
"…will burn."
To Be Continued...