Smoke drifted in the distance.
From the edge of the Mirror Hall, Eren stood staring toward the eastern horizon, where faint black coils rose into the pale sky. The wind carried the scent burned wood, scorched flesh, and something older. A reminder. A warning.
"They're here," Elira said, stepping beside him.
"The Red Circle," Eren murmured. "Has to be."
She nodded grimly. "They burn what they don't control. Entire villages, sometimes. It's their way of forcing the bearer to reveal themselves."
Eren tightened his grip on Akreth. The blade hadn't spoken again since the reflection. But it pulsed now subtle and slow. Not in warning.
In recognition.
The Circle was near.
He turned to Elira. "How far?"
"Three days, if we move fast," she said. "Maybe two if we take the ridgeline and cut through the Mourning Fields."
"What's there?"
She hesitated. "Ash. Graves. The remains of those who followed the first bearer."
"His army?"
"His cult," she corrected. "They called themselves the Emberborn."
Eren shouldered his pack. "Then let's go."
They didn't waste time.
The route north-east took them across jagged hills and through valleys still marked with old scars bones of siege engines half-buried in vines, shattered statues of forgotten saints, and towers hollowed by fire. Nature had done its best to reclaim the wounds. But the land remembered. And Eren could feel it. Akreth made sure of that.
On the second day, the skies grew darker.
They reached the Mourning Fields by twilight.
What met them was not just desolation it was memory turned to ash.
The earth here was black and soft beneath their boots. Charred stumps rose like the fingers of the dead. Stone markers, each etched with the same spiral sigil, dotted the land in uneven lines. And in the center of it all stood a pyre that had never fully fallen a scaffold of burned wood and bone, where the last of the Emberborn had chosen to die.
Elira stopped at the edge. "We go no farther tonight."
Eren glanced around. "This is where they fell?"
She knelt beside one of the markers and brushed ash away from the inscription. "They believed the flame was salvation. That by feeding it, they could purify the world. So when the bearer was slain… they burned themselves alive to keep the fire lit."
He swallowed. "And now the Circle follows that path?"
"Twists it," she replied. "They don't believe in salvation. Only power."
Eren didn't speak after that.
They made camp near a cracked pillar that had once held a statue. Elira slept in silence. But Eren sat awake, staring at the blackened ground beneath him, feeling the quiet stirrings of the sword.
The flame whispered not in words, but in dreams.
He saw fire again. A city wreathed in it. People crying out. And in the center, a figure holding Akreth high above his head not him, but someone else. A man with pale eyes and robes of crimson silk. Around him, a crowd knelt in worship as the flames consumed the sky.
He woke with a start.
It was still dark.
And then he saw it.
Far off across the field, past the broken pyre movement.
Eren rose slowly, hand on his sword. He stepped lightly over the dead earth until he could see it clearly.
Figures in red robes, moving like a tide through the charred mist.
He turned back.
"Elira. Wake up."
She stirred instantly, already reaching for her blade. "What is it?"
"The Circle," he said. "They're already here."
She was on her feet in a breath. "How many?"
"Dozens. Maybe more."
She cursed under her breath. "We're not ready for this."
Eren drew Akreth. "Then we make them believe we are."
They climbed to the remnants of a ridge above the field and took cover behind old stone. The Circle moved with ritualistic precision forming a wide circle around the black pyre. At their center stood a figure taller than the rest, cloaked in layered red and gold. His mask was shaped like a flame smooth, featureless, except for a single black tear down one cheek.
Elira whispered, "That's the Hierophant."
"You've seen him before?"
"Only once. He leads their awakenings ceremonies where they try to force the blade to reveal itself."
Eren watched as the Hierophant raised a staff and drove it into the cracked earth. Red light flared upward in a pillar, illuminating the entire field.
A voice followed, amplified by unnatural magic.
"Flame of the end. Ash of the first. Come forth and be known."
Akreth burned at Eren's back.
Not violently but eagerly.
Elira turned to him. "They're calling you."
He knew.
But he didn't move.
Not yet.
He watched as the Hierophant lifted a burning bowl of ash and scattered it into the air. The smoke curled upward like a serpent and then, in one terrifying moment, turned.
The smoke looked at him.
Eren stepped forward.
The flame had found him.