Whispered Flames

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Whispered Flames

The wind changed first.

Not in strength—but in sound.

It didn't whistle or rush. It whispered.

Like voices caught between breaths, names spoken through gritted teeth, truths hissed through broken dreams.

Talen stood at the orchard's edge, boots sunk into the soft loam. The air felt thicker here—heavier—like wading through memory instead of mist. Beside him, Lira tightened the strap on her cloak.

"It's starting," she said, not as a warning but as a certainty.

Talen nodded slowly. In his hand, the shard from the Cracked Mirror vibrated—not violently, but urgently—as though it longed to leap from his fingers and return to its missing kin.

"The mirrors are speaking," he murmured. "And the world's listening."

Behind them, Riverfort groaned beneath a sky turning unnatural.

Clouds gathered fast, like an army—dark and bloated, flashing not with lightning but with eerie red pulses that flared like embers behind smoke. They bore no thunder. No wind. Just presence.

Lira shivered. "That's not a storm."

Talen turned toward the horizon.

"No. It's a summoning."

High above, in her tower of stone and silence, Nyra stood before the silver flame, the last of the ancient matchsticks in her hand. The basin in front of her flickered erratically, fighting to stay lit. The silver fire was weak—its memory thin.

But it burned still.

Even memory refused to die quietly.

She dropped the matchstick into the basin.

The flame surged.

And the truth screamed.

Not aloud.

Not with sound.

But within her.

Visions burst behind her eyes.

Ashwatch Citadel—walls quivering as the Stolen Mirror pulsed with flame.

Talen and Lira walking straight into destiny's broken teeth.

The other mirrors waking in places long buried: oceans, tombs, bones, and stars.

And worst of all:

Valis.

The name echoed again, louder than ever.

"The Voicekeeper returns."

Nyra clutched the edge of the basin, knuckles white.

"Oh gods," she whispered. "It's happening again."

Far east, across the Scorching Barrens and over broken rock, Ashwatch Citadel shuddered.

Inside the Vault of Flames, the Stolen Mirror glowed like molten iron.

Master Eron knelt, sweat pouring down his face, teeth grit as he struggled to hold control over the binding chains of the chamber. But the mirror had grown restless—no longer a relic to be studied, but a mind awakening.

"You think you are its master," hissed the voice inside. "But you are its mouthpiece."

The iron-bound case groaned.

Cracks spidered through the glass.

The flames inside surged again—black and gold, twisting in silent arcs.

The younger apprentice, terrified, backed against the far wall. "Master—what do we do?"

Eron's eyes glowed faintly. Not with power. But with something older.

Something borrowed.

"We listen," he said hoarsely.

"Or we burn."

Back in Riverfort, students were beginning to wake in their dorms, murmuring in confusion and fear.

Some wept without knowing why.

Some clawed at their beds, crying out for voices only they could hear.

One young boy whispered, over and over, "Valis. Valis. Valis."

Nyra moved quickly, directing the oldest students to comfort the younger. Her face was stone. But her eyes—

They showed something Riverfort had never seen.

Fear.

Talen and Lira stood on the southern path now, their bags packed, their hearts pulled by unseen strings.

"You feel it?" Talen asked.

Lira nodded once.

"It's like the world is… breaking open. Memory is bleeding through."

Talen looked down at the shard in his palm.

A hairline crack had formed since this morning.

He didn't know what it meant.

But it terrified him.

"Nyra won't stop us," Lira said softly.

"She shouldn't," Talen replied. "She's known this moment was coming since the day we arrived."

Lira hesitated.

"But will we make it to the end?"

Talen turned to her, voice low.

"We have to."

That night, as the storm finally reached Riverfort's walls, the skies split—but not with lightning.

With fire.

Ribbons of flame laced the heavens, undulating like living veins of memory.

And within those veins…

Eyes.

Watching.

Waiting.

Whispering.

And in Ashwatch—

The mirror spoke again:

"Three voices rise. Four remain.

When the seventh speaks, the crown will break.

And the world will remember what it was meant to become."

Master Eron smiled faintly, his body trembling under the strain.

"Then let the fire come."