Ashwatch Burns

Chapter Forty: Ashwatch Burns

Ashwatch did not fall quietly.

It screamed.

The storm struck just before dawn, crashing into the fortress walls like a tidal wave of fire and memory. The skies above split into ribbons of red-gold flame, dancing with shapes that were not birds, not spirits, but fragments—faces and forms trapped between what once was and what might have been.

Inside the Vault of Flames, the Stolen Mirror pulsed with anticipation.

It was no longer a relic.

It was a beacon.

And now, its fire answered to no one.

Talen and Lira stood at the ridge, horses rearing in terror as the first shockwave hit them. The world below erupted into chaos—ash flung upward like volcanic smoke, the citadel's outer walls glowing as if lit from within.

"We're too late," Lira murmured.

Talen shook his head. "No. We're just in time."

They descended the ridge at a run, cloaks flaring behind them, firelight catching in their eyes. The ground buckled beneath them as if it too recoiled from the force unleashed inside the fortress.

By the time they reached the front gates, they found them broken.

Not by siege.

By invitation.

The storm had been let in.

Inside Ashwatch, relic-hunters lay scattered—some alive, some too charred to name. Stone corridors flickered with ghostlight, and every mirror in the citadel—common, cracked, ceremonial—reflected not the present, but possible pasts.

One showed Talen as a boy in chains.

Another showed Lira ruling alone, her eyes cold as winter stars.

Every step forward was a trial.

Every reflection was a temptation.

The Vault stood open.

At its center: the mirror, hovering above the pedestal.

No longer chained. No longer passive.

Its frame burned with molten glyphs.

Talen stepped forward.

Lira grabbed his arm. "Wait."

He turned.

And saw what she did.

Master Eron—or what remained of him—stood before the mirror, flames crawling across his skin, voice ragged from screaming.

"You can't take it," he rasped. "It's mine."

"It's no one's," Talen said. "It's a voice—not a weapon."

Eron laughed, teeth blackened. "It speaks to me. It shows me everything. I saw how the world could burn clean."

"You saw a lie," Lira said coldly.

"No," Eron whispered.

"I saw truth without mercy."

The mirror pulsed again.

A sound echoed across the Vault.

Not fire.

Not glass.

But song.

Faint, melodic, and old.

The same voice that had once sung the world into light.

"The fourth mirror hears.

The flame remembers."

Talen drew the shard from his satchel.

It pulsed in rhythm with the Stolen Mirror.

The air between them warped—like the mirror recognized its lost sibling.

And for a brief second—

It quieted.

Lira seized the moment.

She stepped forward and placed her hand on the pedestal.

A shockwave rippled outward—dust lifting into the air, glyphs blazing along the floor.

The storm above flickered.

And from deep within the mirror, something stepped forward.

Not Eron.

Not Talen.

Not even Valis.

But Her.

A woman clad in memory-fire, hair like molten silver, eyes full of every sorrow the world had tried to bury.

"You seek to bind what should not be chained," she said.

"But you are not the first."

"You are only the ones who chose to listen."

Talen fell to one knee.

Not out of submission.

Out of recognition.

"You're one of the Voicekeepers," he breathed.

She smiled.

But it held no warmth.

"I was. Before silence became safer than truth."

The mirror flared.

Eron screamed, stumbling forward.

"I won't go back to being nothing!" he shouted.

The woman's gaze turned to him.

And her voice was a whisper of extinction.

"You never were anything but borrowed flame."

She raised a hand.

And Eron vanished.

Ash scattered to the wind.

The mirror dimmed.

The woman turned back to Talen and Lira.

"You will not find peace at the next mirror.

Only judgment."

Then she stepped backward.

And vanished into the glass.

The mirror cracked.

A single fracture down the center.

But the fire inside no longer burned red.

It burned white.

Talen placed the shard against the mirror's surface.

They merged.

And a voice filled the chamber:

"Four remembered.

Three remain.

The Crown stirs."

Behind them, the sky began to clear.

The storm had passed.

But only for now.

Because Ashwatch had burned.

And with it, everything had changed.