"The true heir does not need a crown. She commands the storm."
—Old Virelion War Proverb
It was the same hall where they sentenced me to die.
The Throne Chamber of Aurelian the Empire's heart and graveyard. The marble was still stained from that day. They hadn't even tried to scrub the blood from the corners. Maybe they thought it added grandeur.
The nobles whispered as I entered, my cloak dragging ash across the floor. Some stepped back. Others bowed, though I hadn't been announced.
Kael Virelion walked beside me, silent as a shadow.
At the far end of the chamber, the Emperor sat on a blackened throne of obsidian and stormsilver, his crown tilting slightly on his brow like it no longer wanted him.
The man who once watched me burn.
I bowed shallowly.
"Your Imperial Majesty," I said, voice steady. "You summoned me."
He leaned forward, resting his chin on one hand. His eyes steel gray, old, and cold scanned me like I was both weapon and enemy.
"I did," he said finally. "Because the dead don't get to rise twice without answering for it."
The throne room cleared. Only the council remained: High Lord Maric, Duchess Ilyana, the Church's last Cardinal, and two generals with eyes that had seen too many wars.
The Emperor rose from his seat.
"I know what you are," he said. "And I know what you've done."
I didn't flinch. "You mean surviving your execution?"
His lips twitched. Not a smile. Something colder.
"I mean claiming power that was never yours to begin with. The Gate's mark. The dual rune. The rebellion."
He stepped closer. Each footstep echoed.
"You destabilized the Church. Destroyed half my capital. Killed my Inquisitor."
I met his gaze. "He tried to crown an impostor."
"He tried to crown peace."
I laughed. It echoed like thunder. "Then peace should learn not to steal faces."
The room fell quiet.
The Emperor's eyes narrowed.
"You want your name restored? You want the Flameborn title back?" he asked.
I didn't answer.
"You want vengeance?"
Still, I didn't speak.
He raised a hand, and I braced for an order arrest, exile, maybe execution again.
But instead
"Then I offer you a seat."
"A seat," I repeated slowly.
He gestured to the empty throne beside his own the Queen's throne. Unused for decades.
"I am old, Seraphina. My sons are fools. My court is fractured. You've already done what none of them could: forced the Church to submit, and turned my nobles against their puppets."
I narrowed my eyes. "So you want to use me."
"I want to survive you."
Kael moved slightly, his hand near his blade. I stopped him with a glance.
The Emperor continued, "I give you land. Title. Your Flameborn name. In return, you fight what's coming through the Gate."
"What's coming?"
He stepped close close enough that only I could hear him.
"The other half of the world."
"The one we locked away."
Later, he took us below the throne room, beneath the palace into chambers no one dared speak of. Runes covered every inch of the stone wards, seals, and warnings.
Kael walked close to me, flame blade drawn and humming.
The Emperor stopped at a door shaped like a gate.
"This was the first breach," he said. "Where the Gate cracked open over a century ago."
He pressed his palm to the seal, and the door groaned open with a sigh like a thousand lost souls.
Inside: nothing.
Just a blank space.
But no sound. No color. No warmth.
A void.
A reflection of what we banished.
The Emperor's voice echoed behind me. "The impostor wasn't the only one born from the Gate."
I turned sharply.
He looked tired.
"You and she were just the beginning. It's splitting others now. Duplicating. Inverting. The Gate was meant to hold memories and fate. But it's bleeding. And it's hungry."
"Why now?"
His answer chilled me.
"Because someone… reopened it."
I didn't sleep that night. Not because of fear but because of what the Emperor had left unsaid.
Who reopened the Gate?
It couldn't be the impostor. She was created from it. She didn't have the power to touch it.
So I traced the memory again.
Her rune. The way it mimicked mine. The way she resisted the Seer's Mark.
The way she had no soul… but somehow had emotion.
That level of mimicry required a blood link.
A key.
Someone gave her part of me.
Someone who had access to my blood after I died.
Kael paced behind me, silent, watching my thoughts spin.
"You're not going to like where this leads," he finally said.
I turned slowly.
"What do you know?"
He met my eyes.
"You weren't the only one brought back, Sera."
Kael led me to the Flame Archives buried deep in the Arcane Academy ruins. Hidden records. Forbidden texts. The place where the Phoenix queens once chose their heirs.
There, on the oldest page of the prophecy ledger, was an entry written in mirror script.
I read it aloud:
"When the Gate is touched by flame, one shall rise again, and one shall be born. But the flame is fractured, and the soul must pay."
"That was the day of your execution," Kael said quietly. "But this isn't written in prophecy ink. It's written in flameblood."
"Mine," I whispered.
"No."
Kael pulled a second document.
This one was sealed with the Emperor's personal crest.
A letter… dated two days after my death.
Inside, a message burned into the parchment with flame magic that only a Virelion heir could decode.
I handed it to Kael. He read:
"Transfer successful. Subject stable. Impostor activated. True flame source fragmented. Gate response nominal."
My knees buckled.
The Emperor hadn't just known about the impostor.
He made her.
Rage didn't even cover what I felt.
It wasn't betrayal it was confirmation.
He never intended to let me die with dignity. He wanted to use me, even after death.
He'd taken my blood. My magic. Split my soul. Built a puppet queen to rule under his thumb.
The impostor wasn't the accident.
I was.
I stormed into the throne chamber the next morning.
Kael at my side. Rune blazing on my collar.
The nobles turned pale as I drew my flame into the air not in a threat, but in a declaration.
"I accept the seat," I said loudly, every word a spark.
"But I will not share a throne with a man who uses corpses for crowns."
The Emperor rose.
The room held its breath.
"Then what do you propose?" he asked coldly.
I smiled.
"I challenge you."
It was ancient law buried in the oldest writs of succession.
Trial by Flame.
When two heirs claimed right to rule, a public duel would determine succession. Not to the death though death often followed but to submission.
Kael argued against it.
"You don't need to prove anything anymore," he said. "You have the court. The people."
I looked him in the eye.
"I have the name. But I need to end him."
He understood.
Because he, too, had once knelt to that throne.
The arena was chosen: the old coliseum, where flameborn duels had once scorched the sky.
The Emperor stood in robes of obsidian and runed steel.
I wore white.
Not for peace.
But because I wanted him to see every drop of blood I spilled.
The horns sounded.
Flame met lightning.
And the world watched as an old tyrant and a reborn queen battled for the right to name the next age.