Chapter 74: The Flame That Should Not Burn
It began with a crack in the archives.
Not thunder. Not quake.
Just silence… breaking.
Kael was the first to notice the shift. He had grown used to silence that whispered, but this was silence that listened back.
"I don't like this place," he muttered, running his hand along the soot-blackened wall beneath Emberhold.
Lumen touched the veins of scorched stone etched with faded symbols. "This isn't Ember Flame. Or Cold. Or even Hollow."
Nerya stepped into the chamber last, halting just before the center.
"This place was never meant to be found."
But Echo kept walking.
Because something called.
The hidden chamber lay beneath layers of forgotten brick, behind a wall sealed with oathsteel and fireglass.
Echo had dreamt of it once—though she didn't understand how.
Now, it felt like she had always known.
The walls were etched in runes none could read, and the air hummed with pressure. Like standing in the pause between lightning and thunder.
At the center, upon a pedestal of obsidian, sat a black scroll.
Bound in ash.
Written in flame so dark it looked like shadow.
Lumen tried to lift it.
Her hand recoiled before she touched it.
Kael tried next.
Nothing. The flame rejected him too.
Only Echo could reach it.
The moment her fingers touched the scroll, the chamber breathed.
Then whispered.
"We were never meant to burn… and yet we do."
They opened the scroll in silence.
The language shifted—changing shape until they could all understand.
It told of a flame with no origin, born not from warmth, but from absence.
A flame that did not warm, did not destroy, did not cleanse.
But consumed.
Truth. Memory. Soul.
It was called the Void Flame.
Born before the First Flame.
Banished when the world took form.
Sealed by the first Flamebound—at the cost of their names.
It had no heat, no light.
Just hunger.
"Their warnings are etched in pain," Nerya whispered, scanning the final passage. "'Let no hand unseal it, for flame unrooted becomes hunger unbound.'"
Kael stepped away. "We can't let this out. We seal this again. We destroy it if we have to."
But Echo…
Echo stared at the last map on the scroll
A place with no name.
A canyon beneath a skyless sea.
The resting place of the Void Flame.
She traced the path, not with ambition, but with purpose.
"What if we don't seek it to use?" she asked.
Lumen frowned. "Then why seek it at all?"
Echo looked up.
"Because someone else might."
The Council erupted in debate.
Ashborn demanded it be buried.
The Hollow warned of prophecy.
The Scorchreach twins pressed coins of heat against the walls to test for lies.
Only Nerya stayed silent.
Until Echo turned to her.
"You've seen its kind before, haven't you?"
Nerya's eyes glistened like frozen tears. "The Cold Flame is flame remembering its death. Void… is what comes after. We were taught to avoid even its name."
Echo turned to the ember at the table's center.
The Unbound Flame flickered.
"Then maybe it's time we stop running from what we fear—and face it."
Later that night, Kael found her in the observatory tower.
"Still thinking about it?"
She nodded. "It's not just a legend. I feel it. In my bones. Like a bruise passed down."
Kael placed a hand on the stone beside her. "What if touching it changes you?"
Echo didn't look at him.
"What if not touching it changes the world?"
At dawn, the Council voted.
Only by unanimous agreement could a Quest of Flame be sanctioned.
One by one, they cast their flame into the basin.
Hollow frost.
Ashborn smoke.
Scorchreach glass.
Coldfire shimmer.
All waited on Echo.
She dropped a single drop of her own blood—burning with the fire of her rebirth.
The basin ignited.
The path was chosen.
That night, Echo stared at the scroll's final words once more:
"It is not fire. It is the absence of fire. It is what remains when purpose burns away."
She swallowed the chill in her chest.
And made ready to walk toward it.
Far away, beyond sea and ruin, a ripple passed through a silent canyon.
And something ancient…
Shifted.
Awake.
Hungry.
Remembering her name.