THE CRUCIBLE OF FORGOTTEN KINGS

The world spat them out like a bad omen.

Lyra hit the ground hard, breath knocking from her lungs as her palms scraped against the surface. It felt solid at first—stone, perhaps—but as soon as her fingers pressed down, it pulsed. Warm. Alive. A dull, rhythmic thump echoed beneath her skin, a heartbeat trapped inside the earth. The floor wasn't made of mere rock.

It was petrified alchemical fire.

She shuddered, drawing her hands back. Golden veins wove through the dark surface, pulsing faintly, shifting whenever she tried to focus on them. Symbols slithered beneath the surface—ancient runes, living equations, forming and unraveling in an endless cycle. The inscriptions matched the ones from the Book of Eternal Flame, their whispers coiling through the air in a language she almost understood.

Something moved above her.

A single drop of liquid struck her cheek, burning hot. Then another.

Lyra tilted her head upward—and her stomach twisted.

The ceiling wept.

Hundreds of faces stretched across its surface, frozen in silent screams. Their mouths gaped open, their eyes hollow and empty, as if the agony of their final moments had been burned into the very stone. Golden tears dripped from their eyes, sizzling against the floor. The scent of something ancient, something bitter, filled the chamber.

She reached up instinctively, brushing a trembling hand over her cheek.

Salt.

They're not just statues. The realization sent a cold spike down her spine. They were once alive.

Each face bore different features, different ages. Men, women—some barely older than children. But all of them were alchemists. She recognized the robes, the symbols carved into their skin, the remnants of flasks and crucibles clutched in skeletal hands.

Their deaths hadn't been an accident.

They had been preserved.

A chime of glass rang out behind her.

Lyra twisted sharply, reaching for her dagger.

Finn emerged from the darkness.

Or what was left of him.

His flesh had vanished. In its place, crystal had taken root, threading through his body like a disease. Veins of gold pulsed beneath his translucent skin, his form no longer flesh and bone but something fragile, something other. When he moved, his limbs refracted the dim light, scattering broken reflections across the chamber walls.

But his eyes—

His eyes were mirrors.

Not just glass, but a thousand fractured visions, each flickering within his gaze like trapped spirits. And when Lyra looked into them, she saw things that hadn't yet come to pass.

She saw herself, standing over Callan, a dagger buried in his throat.

She saw Echo, watching as Verdantia burned.

She saw a door of bone, its hinges creaking open.

Her breath hitched.

"Finn?" Her voice barely rose above a whisper.

He blinked slowly. His voice, when it came, was layered, as if a thousand voices spoke over his own.

"It's loud in here."

A cold wind slithered through the chamber. Echo stepped forward, bare feet silent against the ground. Her gaze drifted upward, to the weeping ceiling, to the figures frozen in their final moments.

And she smiled.

"Oh," she murmured, brushing a hand along the golden-streaked stone. "This is where they tried to cook a god."

---

THE FIRST FLAMEKEEPER'S SECRET

Callan's grip closed around Lyra's wrist. Tight. Steady.

"Don't move," he warned.

She followed his gaze to one of the preserved alchemists. A woman with sharp cheekbones and dark curls, her frozen expression twisted into something between agony and determination.

And in her skeletal hands—

A crucible.

Not just any crucible. Lyra's.

Her breath caught. It was impossible—she had lost it in the Syndicate fire, months ago. And yet, there it was, clutched between the fingers of a woman who had been dead for centuries.

"Callan," she whispered, voice tightening. "What is this place?"

His jaw clenched. "A refinery."

Echo ran her fingers along the alchemist's cheek. Then, without hesitation, she pressed her palm against the woman's chest—

—and the body crumbled to ash.

A gust of air rushed past them as the wall behind her disintegrated. Stone dissolved like sand, revealing a tunnel.

But it wasn't made of rock.

The walls pulsed, as if something beneath the surface was breathing.

Callan's grip on Lyra's wrist tightened. His voice was low, urgent. "They're not dead," he hissed. "They're fuel."

The realization clawed through Lyra's gut. The faces in the ceiling, the alchemists preserved in the stone—

They hadn't been buried.

They had been used.

Used to keep something bound.

Echo exhaled softly, stepping toward the tunnel. "The Crucible of Forgotten Kings," she said. "Where the first Flamekeepers tried to distill the Titan into something they could control."

She disappeared into the tunnel. Finn followed, his glass body scattering fractured reflections across the walls.

Lyra hesitated—

Then the roots moved.

They slithered from the floor, coiling around her ankles. Cold, wet tendrils wrapped around her wrists, dragging her down.

Voices rushed into her mind.

"You're the last ingredient."

"She's been waiting."

"Don't trust the girl made of echoes."

She gasped, struggling.

Callan's dagger flashed. He sliced through the roots, and black sap bubbled up, hissing like acid.

"Look at their anchors," he growled.

Lyra's gaze darted back to the remains of the alchemists. Each had clutched something—a ring, a locket, a doll.

Not trophies.

Sacrifices.

Her breath caught as she turned back to the woman who had held her crucible. Something gleamed at the alchemist's throat—a portrait, worn and battered.

A girl.

With Lyra's eyes.

Her blood ran cold.

"Callan…" Her voice barely made it past her lips.

His grip tightened. "This isn't a dungeon," he said. "It's a feeding pit."

---

THE GHOST IN THE KILN

The tunnel led them into a vast chamber.

It shouldn't exist.

The walls were forged from the corpse of a dying star, molten gold running through veins of blackened stone. At the center stood a woman, untouched by time.

She was not preserved.

She was waiting.

Her robes were woven from living formulas, ink still shifting, words rewriting themselves across the fabric. Her hair was molten gold, strands flowing and reshaping endlessly.

When she turned—

Lyra's stomach lurched.

The woman had her face.

"You're late," the ghost murmured. "I've been waiting thirteen lifetimes for you."

Lyra's dagger was in her hand before she could think. "Who are you?"

The ghost smiled, and in that smile, Lyra saw every regret she would ever carry.

"I am what happens," the ghost whispered, "when the flame loves you back."

Then she opened her arms—

—and the chamber screamed.