Emberwrought

They emerged from the Hollow's Breath as if breaking the surface of a cold, black sea.

The wind that met them was not natural. It was hot — dry, unrelenting — and carried with it the faint scent of scorched marrow and molten stone. Evelyn stepped out first, the newly-formed spiral of stone stairs collapsing behind her like a severed memory.

Torren followed more cautiously. His eyes kept flicking to her chest where the flame had entered, as if expecting to see her burn from the inside out.

But Evelyn didn't burn.

She glowed.

The plateau they stood on overlooked a shifting plain of emberglass and cracked obsidian, studded with heat-bent relics and skeletal remains of long-dead behemoths. In the distance: a dome-shaped ruin pulsed faintly—half-submerged in ash, ringed with pyre markers and half-forgotten banners.

"Where are we?" Torren asked.

Evelyn closed her eyes. The flame inside her pulsed once, then again. Not with pain. With direction.

"Emberwrought," she murmured. "The old forge-city. It was destroyed before the Corefall… long before."

"But I thought it was a myth," he said. "No maps, no survivors, no proof it ever—"

"It wasn't meant to be remembered," Evelyn cut in. "But the Hollow remembered it."

She started walking.

The road to Emberwrought was paved with bones.

Not human. Not entirely beast. Twisted shapes and fused vertebrae formed crude arches and collapsed bridges, as if something ancient and desperate had tried to hold onto structure even as it burned. The very ground pulsed faintly with residual heat.

As they passed one blackened pillar, Evelyn reached out and touched it.

The stone sang to her.

"They built with fire, not stone. Dreamed in sparks. Named their children after stars that never rose."

She pulled back, breath caught.

Torren noticed. "It's speaking to you again?"

"No," she said. "Remembering through me."

At the gates of Emberwrought, two massive statues loomed — fire-walkers carved of obsidian and crimson ore, their faces eroded into featureless hollows. Between them stood a sealed gate, etched with runes long dormant.

But Evelyn's presence changed that.

The runes ignited, one by one — gold, then blue, then a deep, reverent red.

CRACK.

The gate did not open.

It melted.

Beyond it lay silence.

Emberwrought was not a city anymore.

It was a skeleton of genius and madness fused together — black spires and molten canals, balconies overlooking fields of glass, broken forges still warm despite centuries of abandonment.

In the center of it all: the Ember Crucible.

A forge-core the size of a cathedral, suspended above a collapsed well of flame. Dozens of thick chains held it aloft — some snapped, others twitching as if alive.

And beneath it stood a single figure.

A woman.

Dressed in layered robes of scorched silk, her face half-covered in a soot-stained mask of gold and glass. She held a smith's hammer in one hand, and her other hand — missing fingers — glowed with inner flame.

"You came," the woman said.

Evelyn stopped cold. "Who are you?"

The woman tilted her head.

"You know. You've always known. I am what was left behind when the fire forgot its name."

They circled each other slowly.

Torren didn't interfere. He knew this wasn't a fight of swords or strength. This was fire speaking to fire.

The woman tapped her chest.

"I was the last Emberwright. The one who sealed the Crucible when our hearts turned hollow. I forged the first Flameborn — beings who bore the memory of fire."

She pointed to Evelyn. "You are the second. But you came unshaped. Wild. Unclaimed."

Evelyn stood straighter. "I don't need to be claimed."

"You will," the Emberwright said. "Because soon, the Hollow won't just whisper. It will breathe out. And when it does, the world above will choke unless someone remembers how to burn clean."

She turned toward the Crucible.

"You came for a truth, didn't you?"

Evelyn nodded.

The Emberwright gestured, and the chains began to lower the Crucible slowly. It descended toward Evelyn, bathing her in an infernal light.

Then — the final chain snapped.

BOOM.

The ground shook. The Crucible split.

And inside it — a fragment of living flame, pulsing in time with Evelyn's heartbeat.

The Emberwright whispered:

"Forge yourself, or be forged by others."

Evelyn stepped forward.

The flame inside the Crucible met the one already within her.

She screamed — not in agony, but elevation. Her veins lit gold, her breath came in crackling bursts, and her shadow stretched across the ruined city, crowned in fire.

The Hollow had remembered her.

Now Emberwrought named her.

She was no longer just Evelyn.

She was the Flamebearer.