The Thirteenth Ember - Chapter 44: Chapter 44

Aeryn left before the moon set.
No fanfare. No guards. No Kael.
Just a single horse, a blade she didn’t trust, and a fire that pulsed quietly in her chest.
She left behind a sealed note in Kael’s quarters. Nothing long just a few lines of ink and the edge of an apology.
I have to see her with my own eyes.
I promise to return. But if I don’t… keep the flame alive.
You are not just my shield, Kael. You’re my choice.
She rode hard through the broken passes, where the roads curved like scars through the land. The landscape changed with every mile desert turned to ash, ash turned to twisted forest. Trees blackened by old wars. Rivers choked with forgotten armor.
And yet… it was quiet.
Too quiet.
Not a single scout. No spies.
As if the world itself held its breath.
By the third day, she reached the coordinates scrawled on the edge of the letter.
A place marked on no map.
The Hollow of Cinders.
It was not a city, nor a ruin. It was a crater — wide and deep, filled with the bones of ancient trees and the shimmer of old embers. A place where something powerful had once burned… and then vanished.
Aeryn stood at the ridge and looked down.
She didn’t have to wonder long.
A woman stepped from the shadows of the basin.
Tall. Graceful. Clad in robes of storm-gray silk, hair braided with black opals, her face still young but her eyes ancient.
Aeryn froze.
She knew those eyes.
Had stared into them once, through the bars of a Court carriage as she was handed over to men in white.
“Mother.”
Miraen, once called the Ember Queen of the First Flame, tilted her head slightly.
“You came,” she said simply.
Aeryn swallowed the thousand words that rose in her throat none of them sharp enough for what she wanted to say.
“I came for the truth,” she said. “And maybe a reason not to set you on fire.”
A faint smile. “That’s my daughter.”
They sat beside a long-dead pyre. The ground still radiated warmth.
Miraen poured tea from a flask of hollowed bone a gesture so ordinary it unsettled Aeryn more than a blade.
You were raised in the Court,” Miraen said. “You were taught to fear me.”
“No,” Aeryn replied. “I was taught to hate you.”
“Good,” Miraen murmured. “You needed that to survive.”
Aeryn slammed the cup down. “Don’t act like it was some gift. You left me to rot in that palace while they experimented on my blood. While they carved glyphs into my bones to see how much magic a child could take.”
Miraen’s hands tightened around her own cup. “I watched from the cliffs the day they took you. I couldn’t stop them. But I left you the embermark”
“Which almost killed me.”
Silence.
Miraen looked away.
And then finally: “You’re right. I failed you. And not just once. But I did it to keep something worse from happening.”
Aeryn narrowed her eyes.
Miraen looked back at her.
“I did it because the Order wanted to use you to destroy the world. And the Court wanted to use you to rule it.”
The fire between them crackled.
Aeryn didn’t move.
“What do you mean?” she asked, slower now.
Miraen reached into her robes and pulled out an old scroll the parchment frayed, the ink scorched in places.
She unrolled it carefully.
It was a map.
Of veins.
Of runes.
Of Aeryn’s body.
“This,” Miraen whispered, “was created when you were still in my womb. They called it the Emberborn Schema. A blueprint for a weapon made of flame and blood.”
She traced a mark at the center of the diagram.
“They believed that if you were born under the eclipse, with the embermark awakened before your thirteenth solstice, you would be able to bend fire, shadow, and soul. Even fate.”
Aeryn stared at the map, throat dry.
“They used me to make a weapon.”
“They used me to grow it,” Miraen said bitterly
You weren’t born of war. But war grew around you.”
Aeryn stood.
Backed away from the fire.
“I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I want you to know,” Miraen said, standing too. “So that when the final battle comes and it will come you understand what you are. And why the child inside you matters even more than you do.”
Aeryn turned sharply. “You don’t get to talk about my child.”
“You think they haven’t already named it?” Miraen hissed. “The Court calls it The Second Spark. The Order calls it The Last Inheritance. They believe it will either end the old power… or start something worse.”
Aeryn’s voice dropped low.
“I didn’t come here to be afraid.”
Miraen stepped forward. “Then don’t be. But don’t walk blind, either.”
She handed Aeryn a second scroll smaller. Sealed in wax that shimmered like black flame.
“When the Court attacks and they will this is where you must go. There’s something beneath the Temple Ruins in Nar’Vareth that not even they understand.”
Aeryn stared at it.
Then tucked it into her cloak.
And turned.
“You’re not coming with me?” she asked.
“I’ve done what I can,” Miraen replied. “This war is yours now.”
Aeryn mounted her horse.
Paused.
Then said without looking back, “If I survive this… we’re not done.”
“I know.”
“And if I don’t”
“You will.”
The ride back was slower.
Heavier.
But Aeryn was not broken.
She was burning again.