Chapter 13.5: The Forgotten Flame
Location: Ruins of Valemire, 107 years ago
Status: Myth-class Memory Archive - Classified
Access Level: Restricted to Flamebearer Bloodlines
The city burned like a fallen star.
Valemire had once been the jewel of the world-a place where science and spirit coexisted, where architecture kissed the skies and dreams had engines. Now, it was ash and screams, split open by the Hive.
The Hive was not an army.
It was a voice.
A hunger.
A will that could twist minds into fractals and make men worship their own end.
Beneath the shattered spires of the Flameguard Citadel, one man still stood. Bloodied. Breathing. Burning.
His name was Calen Vyre-the last true bearer of the living flame.
"You should have joined us," hissed the thing before him.
It was once human. A woman named Alora, who had taught at the Academy of Light. Now, she was wrapped in writhing black tendrils that shimmered with static, her eyes gone white, her voice layered with thousands.
"You feel it, don't you? The Flame isn't a gift. It's a leash. Cast it off. Merge with us."
Calen gripped his spear tighter. The blade was etched with runes that pulsed in sync with his heartbeat. His left eye was gone. His right hand trembled. The seal on his chest burned.
"I feel everything," he replied. "That's why I can't let you win."
He charged.
The spear struck the creature's chest, not to kill it-but to pin it in place. A second later, Calen pressed his hand to the hilt and whispered something in an old tongue.
The ground cracked.
Flame-pure and white-rushed from beneath them like a geyser. The Hive screamed. Not Alora-the Hive. It recoiled. Split. Pieces of it tried to escape into the minds of crows, insects, broken men lying in the rubble.
Calen's power burned all of them.
But he knew this was not victory.
The Hive could not die. It remembered too much. Every mind it touched became a backup copy, a reflection. The only way to stop it... was to seal it.
To become a prison.
In the heart of the ruined city, deep below the roots of the old cathedral, Calen carved a circle with blood and light. He stood in its center, surrounded by a collapsing sky and silence that had devoured every song.
He reached into himself-into the core where the Flame resided. Not the element. Not magic.
It was will. The absolute refusal to break.
His voice cracked as he began the words.
"By name and blood, by oath and flame..."
The Hive descended, desperate now, coiling through the broken world like a serpent on fire.
"...I seal you not in stone, nor in death..."
His skin cracked. His breath burned.
"...but in me."
The ritual activated.
The Hive surged inward, screeching in alien thought.
Calen fell to his knees, screaming as it entered him-not his mind, but deeper. Into the flame. Into the void behind the void.
And there, he locked it.
He screamed until the city was quiet.
Then he was still.
The Aftermath
When they found him, days later, he was alive.
But not whole.
His hair had turned white. His veins pulsed faintly with colorless light. He no longer spoke unless spoken to. And when he did, he warned of only one thing:
"It will try again."
Calen Vyre disappeared soon after. Some say he died in exile. Others claim he went into hiding with the last of the old order.
The truth?
He left behind only one thing-a sealed box, etched with his bloodline, and a message:
"The Flame shall rise again when the world forgets why it needed it."
Somewhere in the present day...
In the vaults beneath Gravemarch Castle, an old lock clicks.
A scroll unrolls by itself in the archives.
A name appears across the top, written in fading flame:
Michael Callahan