The city had no name.
Not anymore.
Aryelle stared at the blackened ruins stretched before them—skeletons of buildings, towers broken like snapped bones, ash drifting across the cracked stone streets like falling snow.
"This wasn't frost," she said quietly. "This was fire."
Kael nodded. "Long ago. Before the frost came. Before the Crown vanished."
Halric squinted into the haze. "I thought fire was extinct. The last pyrelord burned out centuries ago."
"Not all fire dies when the flame fades," Kael murmured. "Some just wait beneath the ash."
Aryelle didn't like the way he said that.
They moved cautiously through the ruins.
The air was strange here—dry, brittle, humming faintly. Every step sent cinders skittering. Every shadow felt like it was watching.
Aryelle stopped before a wall covered in faded sigils.
"Can you read this?" she asked Kael.
He stepped beside her, ran a gloved hand over the surface.
"It's Old Tongue," he said. "A warning."
"Of what?"
Kael hesitated. "A door that should never be opened. A name that should never be spoken."
Aryelle raised a brow. "What name?"
Kael didn't answer.
But the shadows at his feet stirred.
In the heart of the city, they found a sunken amphitheater—charred, crumbling, filled with bone dust and silence.
Aryelle moved to the center, drawn by something she didn't understand.
The moment her boots touched the circular platform, the ground shifted.
She froze.
"Kael—"
But then the world rushed.
Fire bloomed behind her eyes. A scream echoed in her skull. The air turned gold and red and hot.
And then—
She stood in another time.
The city was whole. Alive. Grand towers crowned with flame. People walked the streets. Laughed. Cried. Prayed.
And at the center of it all—
A woman on fire.
Crowned in thorn and gold, flame woven through her dress, eyes glowing like twin suns. She stood on this very platform, speaking words Aryelle could not hear.
But she felt them.
Power. Warning. Love. Grief.
You must choose.
Aryelle gasped.
Then it all turned to smoke.
She collapsed to her knees, gasping.
Kael was at her side instantly, shadows twitching around him in concern.
"What did you see?" he asked.
"I… I saw her. The Flamebearer. She had the Crown."
Kael's expression sharpened.
"You saw the Crown?"
Aryelle nodded. "It wasn't just an artifact. It was alive. Like it was tied to her soul."
Halric looked uncomfortable. "So what? You touch it and become a living torch?"
"Maybe," Aryelle said. "Or maybe it consumes you."
As they made camp that night on the edge of the ruins, Aryelle sat apart, staring at the coals.
Kael joined her, quiet.
"You've seen what it does," he said. "The Crown. It doesn't just end winter. It rewrites the world."
She didn't respond.
"You're still going after it?"
Aryelle turned to him, eyes fierce.
"If I have to burn to thaw this kingdom—I will."
Kael watched her for a long moment.
Then he said, "Then I'll burn beside you."
Far beneath the city, deep in the buried catacombs no map remembered, a flicker of fire stirred in the dark.
A single thorn glowed red-hot