The flame had spoken.
And now, others followed.
In the days after Eren's words were etched into the walls of the Ninth Archive, the world seemed to turn toward him. Not with reverence. Not with fear. But with something far rarer.
Listening.
From villages burned and rebuilt, from mountain paths once walked only by ghosts, people began arriving at the edges of Eren's growing camp. Some brought supplies. Others brought stories. But most came with questions.
They didn't kneel.
They didn't call him lord.
They called him by name.
And he answered each.
The fire no longer burned for prophecy.
It burned to connect.
One evening, a woman approached. She wore no armor, carried no weapon just a small child on her hip and a piece of parchment in her hand.
"You're the one who spoke," she said.
Eren rose from the stone he had been sharpening his blade upon.
"I spoke. But so did many before me."
She handed him the parchment.
"My husband wrote this before the Circle took him. He said if ever a voice rose that didn't demand, but listened I should find it."
Eren unfolded the page.
The words were faded, but still legible.
"Let the flame be not our master, but our memory."
He folded it again, gently.
"I'll remember him."
The woman nodded.
"And I'll stay. If you'll have me."
"You already made that choice when you walked here."
By the next morning, a dozen more had joined.
Healers. Teachers. A man who once sang in the halls of the fallen temple in Tareth. A pair of siblings who had once been trained by the Ashen Reclaimers, and now sought to unlearn what they'd been forced to carry.
Elira watched it all unfold with cautious hope.
"You're building something without meaning to."
Eren looked over the group preparing breakfast near the edge of the clearing.
"I think it means more that way."
Syra approached with a rolled piece of parchment.
"Letters," she said. "From a group calling themselves the Ashwalkers. They're scattered Reclaimers. Apparently, your words made them doubt their own."
Eren took the scroll, eyes scanning the contents.
They weren't requests.
They were confessions.
One man had helped bind a child who had shown signs of awakening a flame. He'd not seen her burn but he'd heard the screams.
Another woman had chanted the spiral litany of the Reclaimers until her voice cracked and realized it meant nothing the moment she saw Akreth carried in silence.
Eren read every word.
When he finished, he said, "Invite them."
Elira frowned.
"You'd trust them?"
"No," he replied. "But I trust what guilt can build if you give it purpose."
That night, he stood by the campfire and addressed everyone not as a leader, but as a bearer.
"We don't ask who you were," he said.
"We ask who you're becoming."
The next day, something strange happened.
A small fire began burning at the edge of camp.
Not from the hearth.
From the air.
It flickered in a ring, silent and soft. No heat. No smoke. Just presence.
Eren approached it, Akreth drawn.
The ring widened.
And in its center, a figure appeared.
Not physical.
An echo.
She was young, no more than fifteen, her eyes wide with wonder. She wasn't there to threaten. She wasn't even there to speak.
She bowed.
Then faded.
Elira exhaled slowly.
"That wasn't an illusion."
Syra stepped beside them.
"That was a call."
Eren looked at the firelight still circling the grass.
"From who?"
"Someone learning they can now be heard."
And then came the music.
No instruments.
Just voices.
In the hills above the valley, a group of travelers sang a flame-chant older than the Circle, older than the Covenant. Words that had no language. Just rhythm. Just truth.
Eren stood, eyes lifted.
The chorus was beginning.
Not because he commanded it.
But because he had dared to start it.