Truth unchained becomes fire. And fire, once loosed, does not ask permission to burn.
The moment Kael releases Thysseros, a pulse of memoryfire surges upward, crashing through every floor of Aurorium.
Ancient spells rupture.
Arcane wards scream.
The Tower of Sigils fractures, raining ghostlight on the campus.
Instructors scramble. Students flee. Across the academy's skies, sky-sigil banners flicker — signaling a Category 7 Magical Breach. A state of war.
Mistress Elien stands at the breach in the Obsidian Vault, barely shielding herself as the Serpent uncoils.
"You've done it, Kael. You've cracked the lid on everything they buried."
Kael stares into the flame that now clings to his arms like gauntlets of molten memory.
"I didn't start this war. But I'll end it."
Far to the north, beneath the glass dunes of Varnahar, the Crownless begin their move.
Riven leads a strike force of flamebound assassins into the Imperial Archive of Dead Names — a vault carved from voidstone where the Empire stores forbidden identities: souls that have been erased from history.
There, they seek the Shard of Seralyth, a fragment of the First Flame sealed away by the god-kings after the Sundering.
Riven's inner flame pulses erratically — memories from when he stood beside Kael as Vaelorian echo in his mind.
They find the shard. But as he reaches for it, the shard pulses back:
"You remember, but you choose to forget. Treason is not in the act — it is in the silence."
Riven, shaken, takes the shard.
"Then let my silence end in fire."
Aurorium enters emergency lockdown.
All active students and remaining staff are called to the Assembly Spire, a vast amphitheater once used only for coronations and executions. The sky above flickers like torn parchment.
High Chancellor Veyran, long absent, arrives in full regalia — wielding the Scepter of Writ, an artifact that forces silence upon any lie spoken in its presence.
"Students. Trainees. Survivors. What you feel is not the end of the Academy. It is the end of an era."
"The Flameborne War has begun again."
He reveals to all what the faculty had hidden for centuries:
The Ashborne War was never truly won.
The Bone Crown was not destroyed — it was split into living fragments.
The Crownless were not outsiders. They were former kings, erased from memory.
And Kael Vaelorian is one such fragment reborn.
Shock ripples through the hall. Many students back away from Kael. Others stand by him.
Lia, shaken but resolute, takes Kael's hand.
"You're not a fragment. You're a forge. You make memory burn again."
The Academy proposes a dire solution.
The Vote of Flame: a ritual decision by which the academy chooses to either:
Seal Kael permanently beneath the Academy, or
Empower him as a Warden of Remembrance, giving him control over a secret battalion and relics from the god-war to fight the Crownless.
Kael is given 24 hours.
He leaves the Spire with Lia and Mistress Elien.
"They want me to choose… exile or war. But what if there's another way? What if I can gather the other flame fragments before the Crownless do — and reclaim the truth before it devours everything?"
That night, guided by a vision from the Serpent, Kael and Lia descend into the Midnight Annex, the forbidden floor of Aurorium's Great Library.
There, hidden between illusion-walls, they find a chamber that should not exist.
A room where time is fractured — and each book contains a possible version of Kael.
One where he rules as a tyrant.
One where he never awakens the godflame.
One where he burns the world to protect a single person.
Lia pulls away a curtain and finds a tome that is blank, pulsing with memoryflame.
"This… this one is still being written."
Kael places his hand on it.
"Then let's write a story where we survive. Not as gods. Not as kings."
"But as the last ones who remembered the truth — and didn't run."
In the kingdom of Velorys, a boy born blind suddenly opens his eyes. Fire pours from them — blue, crystalline flame that reshapes the stones beneath him.
He whispers a name he has never heard:
"Vaelorian."
The Crownwatch scrambles. The Seventh Flame has awakened.
All over the world, flame fragments begin to stir.
The gods, watching from behind veils of time, begin to argue — some wishing to destroy Kael and his echoes.
Others… begin to remember him.