The Tethered Flame

The Concordium was silent after the Remnant's unraveling.

Not out of fear.

But out of awe.

For the first time in a generation, the Citadel's flame-spires burned silver.

Not red. Not gold.

Silver. The color of unforgotten names.

And for the first time, they burned two at once.

Keiran sat alone in the Hall of Lanterns.

The children were asleep now, scattered like warm embers in the alcoves.

Even Merin had retreated to the scriptorium to begin logging the memories that had returned during the Remnant's collapse.

But Keiran couldn't rest.

Not with the flame still pulsing beneath his skin.

Not with the candle on his wrist now flickering in two rhythms—

His own.

And Lys's.

He stared at it, watching the dual flame flicker in synchrony.

One heartbeat.

Then another.

Then both at once.

"You're not just memory," he whispered.

"You're near. Somewhere."

He could feel it.

Not as direction.

Not as distance.

But as a tether.

A thread of silver flame pulled taut between two souls.

One here.

One... not.

The glyph above the Seventh Seat began to hum.

Not with magic.

With recognition.

It hadn't glowed this clearly since the Severance.

Keiran stood, drawn to it.

He climbed the steps of the old dais, fingers brushing the groove where Lys's sigil had once been etched—and sealed.

Now, it pulsed with life.

As if it knew.

As if it felt her name returning to the world it had been severed from.

And then—

A sound.

Not in the air.

In his bones.

A whisper made of candlelight:

"Auren?"

He froze.

"Lys?"

No answer.

But the flame answered for her.

It flared—not in panic, not in pain.

In hope.

Merin arrived minutes later, breathless and half-dressed.

"You felt it too," he said.

Keiran nodded, not looking away from the sigil.

"She's not gone."

"Not alive either," Merin said carefully. "But…"

"Tethered," Keiran finished. "Somewhere between."

They descended to the forgotten reliquary beneath the Citadel—a chamber sealed since the Severance and lined with candles that had all gone cold.

But now…

One burned.

Dimly.

Wavering.

As if fighting to stay lit.

Keiran stepped closer.

No name beneath it.

Just a mark:

A spiral ringed with teeth.

Merin frowned.

"That's… not hers."

"But it's bound to her flame," Keiran whispered.

He extended his hand toward the candle.

It flared in response.

And behind his eyes—

A vision.

A tower.

Not one he recognized.

Not Aerenmoor.

Not Concordium.

This one was alive.

Breathing.

Grown from bone and iron, spiraling into a sky that bled colors no mortal tongue had names for.

At its peak, chained in place by silver runes—

A figure.

Wrapped in light.

But not whole.

Fractured.

And behind her…

Another figure.

Shadow-wrapped.

Hooded.

Watching.

Guarding.

Or perhaps—waiting.

Keiran staggered back as the vision snapped.

Merin steadied him.

"What did you see?"

"She's bound," Keiran said. "In a tower made of memory."

"A prison?" Merin asked.

"No. A holding place. Something meant to keep her intact until…"

"Until what?"

Keiran looked down at the candle.

It flickered again. Softly.

"Until I find the rest of her name."

Back in the scriptorium, Keiran retrieved the Severance Ledger—the list of names purged during the Seal Year.

It had been redacted, rewritten, burned, and overwritten with magical runes meant to erase context.

But his mark flared each time he passed a page.

Each time a name blinked at him with phantom heat.

Lys wasn't alone.

Her name had been purged alongside thirteen others.

A group.

A pact.

A rebellion, maybe.

Or something else.

The last page bore a line half-burned into the parchment.

Almost illegible. But enough remained:

"They were not heroes. They were…"

Then ash.

Keiran whispered:

"They were what?"

Merin stared at the words.

"Maybe the question isn't what they were."

"But what the world was afraid they'd become."

Above them, a third candle lit.

No name.

No mark.

But the flame burned blue.

Elsewhere—in a chapel long abandoned near the edge of the Dominion's forbidden crescent—

a woman stirred from a dreamless sleep.

She did not know her name.

Only the sound of flames.

And the sense that someone had just remembered her.

She looked to the cracked moonlight and murmured, barely audible—

"...Auren?"