The circle in Obsidian Hall had long since cooled, but its presence lingered. Ash still marked the floor where flame had sealed our pact, and though the chamber was silent, it felt alive—buzzing with the weight of ancient memory.
Elira stood at the center, staring into the cold embers.
"What happens now?" she asked, voice low.
Sabine Corvayne stepped forward. "Now, we begin."
The next hours passed in focused instruction. Sabine demonstrated how to temper magical flame with intention rather than impulse, guiding Elira's hands through sigils drawn in heat. Dorian, with his conjurer's precision, taught her how to use fire not only as a weapon but as a lens—revealing hidden truths buried in objects, rooms, even people.
Asher trained in silence beside her, his control absolute, his strikes methodical. Felix and Tara sparred in unison, mirroring each other's fire patterns with uncanny rhythm. Even Riven, ever skeptical of structure, practiced forming ember shields in the half-light.
It was training born not of tradition, but necessity.
The Echo was coming.
No one had seen it, not directly. But they had all felt it. Heard it in the wind outside their windows at night, seen it in the strange pulses of firelight that sometimes flickered wrong—too fast, too dark, too hungry.
Later that night, while the others rested, Elira wandered alone through the lower wing of Obsidian Hall.
That's when she heard the humming.
Faint. Off-key. A song without words.
She followed it down a narrow, crumbling corridor until she reached a sealed door she hadn't noticed before. The hum stopped the moment her fingers touched the iron handle.
She pushed it open.
Inside was a chamber—bare, save for a pedestal in the center and a series of faded murals along the walls. The air smelled of soot and something older.
Elira stepped toward the pedestal. A book sat there, sealed with wax, covered in sigils too complex to decipher.
Then her ring began to glow.
The wax hissed. Melted.
The book opened on its own.
And a voice—not hers—echoed inside her mind.
"You have found the Ember's Memory. What was lost can be reclaimed. But beware—ashes remember fire. And so does he."
She staggered back, heart racing.
Who is he?
The answer came not in words, but in flame—rising behind her, twisting along the mural wall into the form of a tall figure with a burning crown.
His eyes were hollow.
His presence, suffocating.
And though the flames vanished a second later, the scorch mark remained.
A symbol Elira recognized instantly.
The same one that had marked the Masked One's cloak.