Lira didn't move.
Not when the guards dropped to their knees.
Not when the mage said her name like it was prophecy.
Not even when the villagers stared at her like she'd grown horns and wings.
The air still crackled around her-the kind of charged stillness that follows a lightning strike. Her heart thumped so loud it echoed in her ears. Her fingers twitched with something that didn't feel entirely like fear.
She stood in silence, waiting for someone to laugh. To shout. To do something.
Selin did.
"She's just a farmer's stray," she barked. "She's no heir. She's insane."
The mage rose slowly. His cloak whispered against the dirt as he stepped forward, gaze never leaving Lira. He stopped a few feet away and bowed.
Not a small bow. A deep one. The kind given to royalty.
"I am Arion of the Fifth Flame," he said. "High Scribe of the Ember Circle. I was sent to retrieve you, Lady Thorne."
"I'm not a lady," Lira muttered.
"You are the last living descendant of the Flameblood line," Arion said calmly. "Your birthright is older than this land."
She shook her head.
"You've made a mistake."
"No," he said. "We've made hundreds. But not this."
Behind him, one of the guards stood. A woman with a jagged scar down her cheek. She stepped forward and dropped something in front of Lira with a metallic clink.
A broken silver crown. Blackened at the edges. Old.
Her breath caught.
She had seen it before.
In her dreams.
On her head.
Dripping with blood.
The village didn't matter anymore after that.
Some watched with silent awe. Others spat. Selin yelled something Lira didn't hear. Maybe she was still screaming when the carriage arrived-pulled by two creatures with smoke coming off their hooves and eyes like hot coals.
They placed the crown back in a velvet-lined box and ushered Lira inside.
No chains. No threats.
Just silence.
The inside of the carriage was more magic than material. Spacious, though it shouldn't be. Cool despite the sun. The walls pulsed faintly with golden runes she couldn't read.
Across from her sat Arion, hands folded, expression unreadable.
She stared at the floor.
"Where are we going?"
"To the Flame Court," he replied. "Your family's domain. What's left of it."
"Are you sure I'm her?"
"Yes."
"You don't seem surprised I don't remember."
Arion's lips twitched slightly-not a smile, but not far from one.
"We expected as much. The curse burns memory first."
That word again.
"Curse?"
He nodded.
"You were born with magic strong enough to unsettle the gods. A threat. So they marked your soul. Doomed to die young in every life, reborn without memory, hunted until you awaken again."
"Sounds exhausting."
"It is. But necessary. Until the prophecy is fulfilled, they cannot allow you to live."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Prophecy?"
Arion didn't answer right away. Instead, he reached into his robe and pulled out a scroll, bound in iron thread. He unrolled it slowly and held it toward her.
The parchment shimmered with old fire.
When fire walks again in mortal skin,
And crownless flame returns within,
The blade will rise, the gods shall fall,
And Thorne shall answer chaos's call.
Lira stared at it.
"Sounds dramatic."
"Prophecies often are."
"And they think I'm this... fire person?"
"You are Aelira Thorne. Reborn. The last of the Flameblood line. You died eighty-three years ago at the gates of Hollowspire, defending a realm that no longer exists."
Lira blinked.
"Cool."
Arion's gaze didn't waver.
"You think this is a joke?"
"I think I'm a farm girl with a bunch of burned trees and a glowing necklace," she said, voice steady. "You think I'm a lost queen."
"Aelira was not a queen."
"What was she then?"
He hesitated.
"A weapon."
They traveled through forest and fog for a day and a night. The land seemed to change around the carriage. The air got thinner. The sky is darker. Occasionally, sparks flickered through the trees-like watching stars burn from the inside.
Lira dreamed again.
This time, she was standing on a balcony of black stone. Watching a city below-domes of flame-lit glass, towers spitting smoke, rivers running gold.
Beside her stood two men.
One with hair like moonlight, hand on her shoulder. Familiar.
The other wore no expression, only a ring etched with the same symbol that now burned on her pendant.
They said nothing.
But she knew both had loved her.
And she had destroyed them anyway.
The Flame Court wasn't a palace.
It was a ruin.
Once-grand halls reduced to echoing shells. Pillars cracked down the center. Ash covering everything like old snow. What remained shimmered faintly with trapped power—veins of red light crawling up broken statues, through crumbled walls.
Arion led her to what once must have been the throne room.
Now, it was silent stone and shattered windows. At the far end sat the throne—cracked in half, just like in her dreams.
"It's all gone," she whispered.
"This place died with you."
Lira stepped forward.
She ran her fingers along the broken armrest of the throne.
And felt it-a jolt, sharp and cold like a pulse from deep in the bones of the stone.
Not memory.
Recognition.
It knew her.
"There are others who won't accept you," Arion said from behind her. "They'll want to test you. Some will want to kill you."
"Let them try," Lira said.
The words came without thought.
Not bravado. Not pride.
Just certainty.
She turned back toward him.
"What now?"
Arion gave a slight nod.
"Now, we begin unlocking what's left of you."
"And after that?"
His eyes glinted with something ancient.
"Then we find the gods who did this."