The Thirteenth Ember - Chapter 33: Chapter 33
You are reading The Thirteenth Ember, Chapter 33: Chapter 33. Read more chapters of The Thirteenth Ember.
The rebel safehouse was nothing more than a sunken chapel, long buried beneath a drowned city in the marshlands of Celen Vale.
From the outside, it was ruin.
Inside, it pulsed with movement.
Dozens of new faces farmers, healers, former scholars all quietly united by one thing:
They believed.
They’d seen Aeryn’s flame.
They’d heard Mirael’s voice echo through memory-embers.
The rebellion was no longer a whisper.
It was rising.
Kael arrived two days after the Hollow escape.
His boots were cracked with frost. His eyes sunken but alert
searched the room until they found her.
Aeryn.
She dropped the flask in her hand and ran to him.
They didn’t speak.
Their embrace said enough.
I found it.
You survived.
We’re still us.
Later, as they sat beneath a cracked mural of the Old Flameborne Prophecy, Kael pulled out the vial.
The ember?” Aeryn asked, softly.
He nodded.
“It’s real.”
She held it up to the light. The shard inside swirled with ghostfire — blue, white, and faintly gold.
Her voice grew quiet.
“This could change everything.”
Kael’s jaw tightened. “Or end it all. It’s not a gift. It’s a choice.”
Aeryn nodded slowly.
“Then we won’t use it. Not unless we must.”
She tucked it into a hidden pocket in her cloak.
Neither of them noticed the flicker of movement in the shadowed corridor.
Someone had been listening.
That night, the safehouse buzzed with quiet energy.
Liora had mapped three new vault locations — not of fire, but of testimony: hidden truths from the earliest Flameborn. One scroll claimed a Priestess once turned on the Court from within.
Another hinted that Aeryn was not the first born of dual flame.
But before they could study it…
The scream came.
A guard. Dead in the corridor.
The scent of scorched blood thick in the air.
The wall beside him marked with a sigil none had seen in years:
The mark of the Order’s oldest assassin sect The Veilflame.
Aeryn’s heart sank.
“They’re here.”
Kael scanned the room. “Someone let them in.”
Liora’s face had gone pale.
“There’s only one entrance. No one forced their way in.”
Aeryn’s eyes swept over the gathered rebels.
And it hit her like ice:
The Court hadn’t come to destroy them.
They’d come to sow mistrust. To unravel the rebellion from the inside.
To make them doubt one another.
And worst of all…
To make Aeryn doubt herself.
Before dawn, another scroll vanished.
A second guard went missing.
And the vial the ember was almost taken from her cloak.
Only Kael’s watch stopped it.
They had a traitor among them.
Someone with Court blood… and a rebel face.
And the worst part?
They’d already earned Aeryn’s trust.
From the outside, it was ruin.
Inside, it pulsed with movement.
Dozens of new faces farmers, healers, former scholars all quietly united by one thing:
They believed.
They’d seen Aeryn’s flame.
They’d heard Mirael’s voice echo through memory-embers.
The rebellion was no longer a whisper.
It was rising.
Kael arrived two days after the Hollow escape.
His boots were cracked with frost. His eyes sunken but alert
searched the room until they found her.
Aeryn.
She dropped the flask in her hand and ran to him.
They didn’t speak.
Their embrace said enough.
I found it.
You survived.
We’re still us.
Later, as they sat beneath a cracked mural of the Old Flameborne Prophecy, Kael pulled out the vial.
The ember?” Aeryn asked, softly.
He nodded.
“It’s real.”
She held it up to the light. The shard inside swirled with ghostfire — blue, white, and faintly gold.
Her voice grew quiet.
“This could change everything.”
Kael’s jaw tightened. “Or end it all. It’s not a gift. It’s a choice.”
Aeryn nodded slowly.
“Then we won’t use it. Not unless we must.”
She tucked it into a hidden pocket in her cloak.
Neither of them noticed the flicker of movement in the shadowed corridor.
Someone had been listening.
That night, the safehouse buzzed with quiet energy.
Liora had mapped three new vault locations — not of fire, but of testimony: hidden truths from the earliest Flameborn. One scroll claimed a Priestess once turned on the Court from within.
Another hinted that Aeryn was not the first born of dual flame.
But before they could study it…
The scream came.
A guard. Dead in the corridor.
The scent of scorched blood thick in the air.
The wall beside him marked with a sigil none had seen in years:
The mark of the Order’s oldest assassin sect The Veilflame.
Aeryn’s heart sank.
“They’re here.”
Kael scanned the room. “Someone let them in.”
Liora’s face had gone pale.
“There’s only one entrance. No one forced their way in.”
Aeryn’s eyes swept over the gathered rebels.
And it hit her like ice:
The Court hadn’t come to destroy them.
They’d come to sow mistrust. To unravel the rebellion from the inside.
To make them doubt one another.
And worst of all…
To make Aeryn doubt herself.
Before dawn, another scroll vanished.
A second guard went missing.
And the vial the ember was almost taken from her cloak.
Only Kael’s watch stopped it.
They had a traitor among them.
Someone with Court blood… and a rebel face.
And the worst part?
They’d already earned Aeryn’s trust.
End of The Thirteenth Ember Chapter 33. Continue reading Chapter 34 or return to The Thirteenth Ember book page.