Some people died in fire. Ember just kept burning.
3 years later - Location: Kaelthorn District, Western Helion Outskirts
Smoke drifted through the rafters of the tavern like a second ceiling, curling between flickering blue lights and broken ventilation fans. The place didn't have a name—just a rusted sign outside that used to say SHELTER. Now only SHE and a few scorched letters remained.
The clocks in Kaelthorn still read 2151—though time hadn't meant anything since the fire.
Ember sat at the center of the bar, in the seat directly across from the barkeep. Not at a table. Not along the edge. Just… there.
Alone.
No one sat near her.
Every other stool on either side remained empty—like an invisible force held the rest of the city at arm's length. The patrons sat at the tables instead, tucked in corners, backs turned slightly away.
She didn't mind.
She liked the silence better than fake smiles.
She didn't drink fast. That was the trick. You drank slow enough to not feel it until you were already walking home, when the streets went quiet and the pain didn't ask permission anymore.
She raised her glass, clear and bitter. It burned the way she wanted it to.
Around her, the bar murmured with tired voices—mechanics on break, runners selling fake IDs, a few Helion grunts out of uniform pretending they weren't on watch. No one looked at her. Not directly.
Everyone in Kaelthorn knew better than to stare at the girl in black with fire-scars on her gloves and no shadow in her eyes.
"Another?" the barkeep asked, not unkindly.
She slid the empty glass forward, dropped two credits on the counter, and didn't answer.
Twenty Minutes Later – Location: Sector 9 Lower Lanes
The streets outside were worse.
Kaelthorn hadn't belonged to itself in years. It was technically still Helion territory, but no one came here unless they had to. The lights flickered like they were ashamed to still be on. Metal signs creaked overhead with the wind, old propaganda posters peeling away to reveal even older bloodstains underneath.
Ember walked with her hands in her coat, hood still up.
The liquor swirled quietly in her blood, but it wasn't enough to make her stumble. Just enough to keep her from caring about the bodies she passed—two addicts curled in a loading dock, an enforcer taking bribes behind a broken checkpoint.
Someone coughed. Someone cried.
No one was saved.
She passed the merchant stalls with the same empty eyes. Bought a ration loaf and a warm drink without saying a word. The vendor didn't comment this time. Maybe he'd learned.
She was just a shadow now. One of Kaelthorn's ghosts.
And she liked it that way.
Location: Lower Verge – On the Way Home
The air in this part of Kaelthorn always tasted like burnt copper and old wire.
The alleys were narrow, the walls bending inward from age or impact, casting shadows that never quite went away—even when the city lights above tried. Ember moved through it like she always did. Hood up. Hands buried in her coat pockets. Eyes down.
This was her path.
Her routine.
Every step memorized.
Then she heard it.
A noise just sharp enough to freeze her foot mid-step.
A grunt. A scuffle. The scrape of shoes on wet pavement.
She tilted her head slightly, listening.
Keep walking.
That's what she told herself.
But then came a voice—young, cracking from fear.
"Please. I don't have anything left!"
Then the sound that cut through everything:
A smack.
Hard.
Followed by silence.
She stopped under a flickering wall lamp.
Her fists clenched slowly inside her pockets.
Still not your problem.
She turned her head to the side—toward the dark alley that curved just out of sight.
Then—like a whisper across old scars—came a memory.
Axel's voice.
That last moment.
The gate slamming shut.
Her screaming.
Him choosing to stay.
"Live like someone I'd be proud of."
She turned toward the alley.
The alley was lit by a single overhead strip light, yellow and struggling to stay alive.
Three teens—dirty jackets, cheap knives, cracked boots—stood over a small kid huddled on the ground. Maybe ten years old. His bag had already been torn open. One of the teens was going through it. The second was holding the kid down with a boot.
The third had a dented metal pipe—and a grin that didn't match his age.
"I said give me the rest. Don't make me check your teeth for creds."
The kid shook his head, shielding his face. "I—I don't have any. Please—"
The one with the pipe nudged his ribs hard.
"You had them last week. You think you're cute now, huh?"
The others laughed.
"He's gonna cry again."
"Cry for us, little rat."
"Should we break a finger first?"
Ember's voice cut through the laughter like a broken bottle.
"Back off."
They all turned.
The one with the pipe raised his eyebrows, amused. "What's this? A stray?"
Another one stepped forward, flipping his knife lazily in his palm. "You picked the wrong alley, freak."
The third didn't speak. Just adjusted his grip on the kid's jacket and grinned wider.
Ember walked forward slowly, hands still in her coat.
She didn't draw her weapon. She didn't make a threat.
She just looked at the one with the pipe and said, flat:
"Last chance."
That was enough.
He swung.
Ember ducked the first blow. Grabbed his arm. Drove her shoulder into his chest—and slammed him backward into the alley wall. The pipe clattered to the ground. Before he could breathe, she kicked his leg out and dropped him.
The one with the knife cursed and lunged.
She turned into it, caught his wrist, and twisted. The blade dropped. She swept his legs, kneed him in the ribs, and let him hit the ground with a thud.
The third ran.
He didn't look back.
The kid didn't move.
Ember stood there, chest rising just a little harder now, heart pounding not from fear—but from memory.
The moment passed.
She turned.
Didn't ask the kid if he was okay. Didn't help him up.
She just wanted to get home.
But something glinted on the ground.
A torn satchel. Scattered contents. A few rations. Some broken meds.
And a metal box—small, dark silver, edges rounded smooth, no label.
She picked it up. It was warm.
Not hot.
Just alive.
The kid was still watching her like she was something half-dreamed, half-nightmare.
"Don't stay here," Ember said, voice flat.
She turned and walked away.
The box pulsed once in her grip—so faint she almost didn't feel it.
Location: Ember's Shack — 2:47 AM
She had just gotten back to the shack.
It sat where it always had—half-sunk into the dirt behind a row of storage husks and broken solar collectors. No door. Just a rusted sheet of metal she dragged across the entrance at night.
Inside, it was cold. It was always cold.
The bed creaked when she passed it—what was left of a mattress slumped over wood that had long since split. A crate acted as her table. One chair, missing a leg, leaned against the wall like it had given up.
And in the corner, against the back wall—her broken torchblade, propped up like a memory someone tried to forget.
The crack down the center ran clean. She hadn't touched it in years.
She dropped the stolen food near the crate.
Then sat.
No ceremony. No thought. Just… sitting.
She pulled the box from her coat pocket and set it down on the crate in front of her.
It didn't glow. Didn't hum. Just… waited.
She flipped the latch open.
Inside, nestled in a shredded lining of black cloth, sat a core.
Spherical. Deep, scorched red. Veins of faintly pulsing orange ran like cracks through stone.
It looked damaged.
And familiar.
Not in a way she could explain. Not like memory.
More like a shape she'd seen once in a dream she forgot too fast.
A pulse she'd felt before… but only while the world was burning.
She blinked.
Have I seen this before?
She wasn't sure. Couldn't put a name to it. Couldn't place the image.
But her hand moved anyway.
And when her fingers brushed the surface—
The world went black.
There was no warning. No wind. No sound.
Just darkness.
Then—fire.
It didn't burn her.
Not yet.
She stood in a hallway she knew too well.
Charred walls. Ceiling half-collapsed. The floor slick with ash and blood.
The bunker.
But wrong.
Dead quiet, except for the slow crackle of burning steel.
The lights above flickered red, casting long shadows across the walls.
Screams echoed faintly in the distance—distant, distorted, like they were underwater.
She turned—and saw herself.
Sixteen. Torchblade in hand. Blood on her gloves.
Frozen.
Afraid.
"No," Ember whispered. "Not this."
She tried to close her eyes.
She couldn't.
The ground shuddered. The hallway twisted.
She stepped backward—and found herself somewhere else.
The armory.
Then the mess hall.
Then the launch bay.
Each location blurred at the edges, replaying moments she didn't want to see.
Laughter. Faces. Footsteps.
The celebration before it all fell apart.
She heard Renna's voice—laughing, teasing.
She saw Axel again, yelling over the comms.
"They're inside!"
A flash.
The corridor tore apart.
She was back in the final hallway.
And now Axel stood ahead of her—back to her, facing the flames.
His coat was torn. Blood down one side. Torchblade flickering.
He turned his head slightly, not enough to see his face.
"You had a future," he said.
The flame surged forward.
She covered her face—but the heat didn't touch her.
She was kneeling now.
On glass.
The fire was gone. The hallway gone.
Below her—beneath the transparent floor—were fragments. Moving images.
Scenes from her life, fractured and floating:
Her brother's smile
The first time she held the torchblade
Her mother's cloak
Axel putting her in the pod
Renna turning, reaching—then vanishing in static
She shook.
Not from fear.
From the weight of it.
Then the voice came.
Soft. Patient.
Ancient.
"You've seen what you ran from."
"Now show me what you'll carry."
She looked up.
A man stood at the edge of the glass.
Worn robes. Gray braid over one shoulder. A cane carved from something too dark to be wood.
His eyes didn't glow. They reflected.
Like mirrors that had been watching her her whole life.
"Welcome to the flame, Ember Caelis," the Narrator said.
"It never stops burning. But you get to decide whether it becomes a fire…"
He leaned forward, smiling slightly.
"...or an echo."
Ember stared at the man in silence.
The fire was gone now, but its memory still pressed into her chest.
"What is this?" she asked, voice quiet, low.
"A reflection," the man said. "Of what broke you. Of what you tried to forget."
He walked slowly across the glass, footsteps silent. His cane tapped once.
"We do not choose the first scar. But we choose whether to keep hiding from it."
He looked at her—gently. Not with judgment.
"What do you see when you look down?"
She glanced beneath the glass again.
Her brother's face. Her mother's cloak. Renna. Fire. Blood. The echo sigil falling from her hand.
"Mistakes."
"No," he said, and tapped the glass.
"You see the pieces you refused to carry. That's why they still hurt."
She clenched her jaw. "So what? You want me to say I deserve this?"
The man tilted his head.
"You were never asked to deserve it. Only to survive it."
The world around them dimmed. The glass floor cracked, veins of red light creeping outward.
"The fire is not mercy. But it remembers."
"If you can face it…"
He stepped back.
"…then you're ready."
She stood slowly.
The floor beneath her began to glow. One final image rising through the glass:
Axel, standing just beyond the gate. Looking back at her. His hand raised—not waving goodbye.
Holding the line.
"You can walk away," the Narrator said.
"Or you can take the weight."
She didn't answer.
She stepped forward.
Into the fire.
The echo realm vanished.
She woke on the shack floor, gasping once—then still.
The box lay open beside her.
But the core was gone.
Only the frayed cloth lining remained, scorched faintly at the edges.
Like something had burned through it… and left.
She sat up slowly. Her chest ached—not from pain, but from pressure. Like something new had taken root under her ribs.
She pulled back the collar of her shirt.
There, faintly glowing beneath her skin, was a sigil.
Orange. Circular. Four branching veins, like fire trying to find its shape.
The Pyra Sigil.
She stared at it until the glow faded back into her skin.
It didn't vanish. It simply settled—like a memory no longer fighting to be remembered.
The room was quiet. No fire. No vision. Just her.
She sat for a while.
Longer than she meant to.
The broken torchblade leaned against the wall like it had never moved. The mattress was still crooked. The roof still leaked.
Nothing had changed.
Except her.
And not in a way she could name. Just in that feeling—deep in her chest—that the silence wasn't enough anymore.
Go back.
Not a voice. Not a command.
Just a knowing.
The place she had avoided for three years. The grave of everything she ran from.
Not to fix it. Not to honor it.
But because that's where the first scar was left behind.
She stood.
Packed the food.
Grabbed the coat.
And left the shack behind.
Location: Outer Wastes — Rebel Bunker Ruins
The wind hit harder out here.
Not colder. Just… heavier.
Dust curled around her boots as Ember walked across the empty flatland where the outer wall of the old bunker used to stand.
There were no signs.
No markers.
No one had rebuilt. No one had even scavenged the bones.
Like the world wanted to forget.
She climbed down the half-collapsed access path, one hand grazing the cracked railing.
Every step echoed more than the last.
She didn't speak. Didn't cry. Didn't run.
But her breath caught when she reached the base of the slope and saw it again.
The main corridor.
Caved in. Burned out.
The floor, warped where explosions had hit. Bits of glass from light panels scattered across the ground.
No bodies. Not anymore.
But the silence was worse.
The kind that sounded like people who once laughed here.
She passed the old mess hall.
Half the wall was gone. Tables flipped. One of the support beams still blackened.
She stepped through the briefing room, or what was left of it.
The display table cracked down the middle. A few scraps of old mission maps fluttered against the wall like ghosts trying to forget.
She moved on.
Her legs stopped on their own.
She'd reached the final hallway.
The launch bay.
The pod doors were long gone. Metal torn and half-melted.
The place where Axel made her leave was just a patch of dirt now, surrounded by ash.
And something else.
A faint glow, half-buried near the scorched corner.
She knelt down. Brushed the dust away.
It was his torchblade.
Still cracked.
Still here.
She didn't speak.
Just stared.
And then—without realizing it—she whispered:
"I'm sorry."
She closed her eyes. Let it hurt. Let it sit.
No one answered.
But she didn't expect them to.
She stayed there for a while. Sitting in the ashes of a moment that never stopped burning.
The sigil on her chest pulsed once beneath her coat.
No warmth.
Just weight.
When she stood again, she didn't know where she was going.
Only that back wasn't far enough anymore.
And for the first time in three years…
She started walking toward the future.
Elsewhere in Kaelthorn, That Same Night
The room smelled like blood and citrus.
Flickering light panels buzzed above, one half-smashed and leaking. A boy stood in the center—shoulders hunched, lips twitching, shifting on his feet like the floor itself might swallow him.
Across from him sat a man with rings on his fingers and gloves stitched with steel-thread seams. He didn't speak.
Didn't even look up.
Taz Moreno.
Leader of the Sixth Fang.
And Kaelthorn's most valuable mistake.
The boy coughed once to break the silence.
"We got the location right. Verge sector. Box was in play, just like the tip said. We were making the grab, and—"
He paused. Thought about something. Edited it mid-sentence.
"—this girl came out of nowhere. Hood up. Fast. Like, trained or something. She hit hard. Took the box and ran. We didn't even get her name."
Taz still didn't move.
The boy glanced at the guards behind him. Then back to the floor.
"She… looked like a ghost. Black coat. Gloves. Never said a word."
"You had one job," Taz finally said, voice low.
"I know. I know. I tried to stop her, but—"
Taz stood now. Slowly.
The boy took a half-step back, swallowing hard.
Taz's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to.
"You thought if you snagged the kid's satchel first, maybe you'd get lucky. Sell some junk. Maybe find a second payday. Right?"
The boy's eyes widened. His mouth opened.
Taz tilted his head slightly.
"What, you thought I didn't know?"
That stopped the boy cold.
Taz was in front of him before he could speak.
One hand wrapped around the boy's neck. Lifted him off the floor.
His feet kicked. Hands clawed. Couldn't reach.
Taz leaned in close, voice cold and quiet.
"You were told the gem was the only thing that mattered."
"You made yourself the priority."
The boy tried to speak.
Taz's blade came up fast, clean, and deep.
It wasn't theatrical. Just final.
He let the body hang for a breath—then dropped it like trash.
Blood pooled across the floor.
The guards didn't blink.
Taz wiped his blade with the boy's own sleeve and walked away.
"Find her," he said, not turning back.
"And if the gem's real..."
He poured out the last of his drink onto the floor beside the corpse.
"Don't kill her."
A beat.
"Break her first."
Thank you for reading Chapter 4. This one was heavy—quiet, but defining. Ember's first step back into the past isn't heroic. It's painful, raw, and long overdue.
And now… others are starting to notice her.
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See you in Chapter 5.
– Fourborn Author ✍️