Location: Ruins of Thalorim – Beneath the Whispering Grove
POV: Seris Valen
The forest whispered secrets the way the dead whispered regret.
Seris knelt at the overgrown altar, her fingers tracing a crescent-shaped scar burned into the stone. The trees around her groaned with age, heavy with memories too old for the world above.
She'd followed the pull for days. Something beneath her bones guided her back to this forgotten grove. To the place her mother had once called "The Oracle's Womb."
Now, only ghosts answered.
And one voice in her mind.
"When the flame dies, the true curse begins."
A Bloodline Unearthed
She laid her palm on the altar.
It burned.
Not with heat—but memory.
Visions surged through her:
A woman cloaked in nightfire screaming as a child was taken from her arms.
An elder druid carving runes into bone, whispering the words, "Seal the blood that remembers."
A prophecy, half-spoken, shattered mid-chant as the temple fell in flame.
Her own face reflected in the smoke—older. Hardened. Crowned not with gold, but with fire.
A Warning From the Past
Behind her, a figure emerged.
Ashren.
He moved like shadow softened by sorrow.
"You came," she said.
"You were never meant to carry it alone," he replied.
Seris turned to face him. "The flame inside you may be dormant… but something else woke when Vauryx died. This grove was a seal. And it's broken."
Ashren's eyes narrowed. "What was sealed?"
Seris's voice trembled.
"Me."
The Heir of the First Curse
The truth unraveled like threads dipped in blood.
Seris wasn't just a warrior, or even a mystic.
She was the last-born vessel of the Primordial Curse—a being so ancient, the gods buried its name beneath the oldest roots of the world.
And now it stirred in her veins.
Ashren stepped forward. "Then we find a way to contain it."
"No," Seris said, fierce. "We find a way to end it."
Final Scene – A New War Awakens
In the shadows of the grove, something watched them.
Not flame.
Not man.
But a hunger born before time.
And with the seal broken… it was no longer sleeping.