The Flame flares. Shadows twist along the walls, reshaping themselves until an image bleeds across the stone. Flickering. Alive.
My breath hitches. Jordi. He walks down a hill shrouded in mist, his figure small against the darkness. He passes through an archway like the one outside this chamber.
Ancient. Waiting. He steps inside and moves toward a light that pulses like a heartbeat. The cave looks like one near the cliffs, but wrong somehow. Older. Sacred.
A beam of pale light pours from above, illuminating something floating over a stone platform. A blade. Long and slender. Hovering in the air as if held by invisible hands. Like an offering. I rise on my knees to get a better look. It looks like the ceremonial swords the Veritas blacksmiths forge for the Moon Festival.
Like a?—
No.
Oh gods, no.
A god scepter.
Each god has one. A scepter forged from one of their bones. Some accounts claim they’re swords. Others say they’re keys to doors no mortal should open.
But every story agrees on one thing: the scepters choose their wielders. And the unworthy are cursed. Destroyed. Unmade. Not right away, but over time. I hold my breath as Jordi's hand stretches toward the light. The image shatters into smoke.
My eyes snap back to the Flame. It watches me. Waits. A predator savoring the moment before the kill.
“Would you still bargain for his life?” The fire crackles, sparks drifting upward like dying stars. “If you knew your brother was deemed unworthy? If you knew his blood was already turning black with the curse?”
The words carve through me. I think of the poison spreading through his veins. The black lines I watched spider across his skin. Was that the arrow, or something older? Something he did to himself in that cave?
It doesn't matter.
“Yes.”
“Even if it means you'll be indebted to me? Even if the price is more than you can fathom?”
I don't hesitate. “Yes.”
The Flame stills. The chamber falls so silent I can hear my own heartbeat, wild and desperate, echoing off the ancient stone.
“Why?”
The question cracks something open inside me. All the years of pushing him away. All the secrets and silence and distance I built between us because I thought it would protect him. And now he's dying in my arms and none of it mattered. None of it kept him safe.
My throat closes. My eyes burn. When I finally speak, the words come out shattered. “He's all I have.”
“Notall,” the Flame murmurs.
Soft. Almost tender. The gentleness is worse than the roaring. I wonder if it’s referring to the Sages, my friends, or both.
“He's the only one who matters.” A tear slips down my cheek as I say the words. “Please. I'll give you anything. Just save him.”
The Flame swells. Once. Twice. As if breathing me in. As if tasting the desperation on my skin.
“The bargain is struck.”
The words echo through the chamber, through my bones, through the hollow place in my chest where my heart used to be. For one fleeting moment, relief crashes over me. Jordi will live. Whatever this costs, whatever I've promised, he will live.
But the Flame isn't finished.
“I do not heal, child.” Its voice drops to something low and ancient. Something that has watched civilizations rise and crumble to dust. “I take. That is my nature. That is all I have ever been.”
The fire flickers. Shadows claw up the walls.
