The world narrowed the moment we crossed the Emberthorn gates.
No more classrooms.
No more tutors.
Just wind, frost, and the whisper of old fire.
Riven and I rode fast across the southern ridgelands, past flame-scorched pines and fields of brittle gold. The Crater wasn't far on a map—but distance in the Flamebound world isn't just measured in miles.
It's measured in cost.
And Ashpine had cost more than most.
"They say the first Flameborn girl immolated herself here," Riven said, her voice low under the howl of the wind.
I nodded. "To seal something. A rift. Maybe a gate. The Chronicle was vague."
"She left behind a piece of the Crown."
"Or a piece of herself," I added, and neither of us spoke for a while.
By nightfall, the forest turned strange.
The trees leaned wrong. The stars thinned above us. And the air—it hummed.
Low, steady. Like a pulse beneath the ground.
We made camp under an old flamewillow. The bark glowed faintly, shedding soft amber light.
Riven handed me a flask. "Your hand's shaking."
I hadn't noticed. The ember in my chest burned steadily now—no longer a flicker.
"Sorry."
She shook her head. "You don't have to hide it. Not with me."
I hesitated, then looked at her.
"I think I remember burning here."
Her eyes widened slightly.
"You mean… you? The past you?"
"Maybe. Or maybe it was just a dream." I looked out toward the dark horizon. "But it felt real."
We reached the Crater at dawn.
The land fell away like a scar.
Ashpine wasn't a hole. It was a wound. A blackened valley rimmed by bleached bones of trees and scorched rock.
At its center stood a spire of glassed obsidian.
The Flameforge.
The place she died.
I stepped forward.
The ground trembled faintly beneath my boots. The obsidian pulsed with old flame.
The moment I touched it—
Flash.
A girl in crimson. Laughing. Crying. Her hands lit with too much fire.
The Crown on her brow, half-melted.
And behind her—
A rift.
Something screaming through it.
Her scream joining it.
I stumbled.
Riven caught me. "Elira!"
I looked up.
There—lodged deep in the obsidian—was a shard of gold and ember, burning without fuel.
A fragment of the Crown.
I reached out.
And the Flameforge spoke.
"Would you burn again, child of ash?"
"Would you wear the fire, knowing what it costs?"
I closed my eyes.
"I would."
I took the fragment.
It didn't burn me.
It welcomed me.
Later, at the rim of the Crater, Riven studied the shard as it floated between my palms.
"Do you feel different?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "And no."
"It's like... a memory I hadn't earned yet. But one that belongs to me."
She looked at me for a long time. Then said softly:
"Whatever happens next, don't carry it alone."
I smiled.
"I won't."
Chronicle Entry – Ashpine Flameforge Fragment Claimed
Elira Flameborn has taken the first of the three.
The fire remembers her.
And now, so does the world.