The Thirteenth Ember - Chapter 48: Chapter 48

The lower levels of the temple were like a wound in the earth.
No light. No sound. Just stone and memory and the taste of old blood in the air.
Aeryn descended the spiral steps first, her torch barely piercing the dark. Kael followed close, his blade drawn, eyes flicking to every carved wall and strange marking. Every few steps, the temperature shifted—warm, then cold, then chokingly dry as if the air had not been breathed in centuries.
At the bottom, the steps opened into a circular antechamber. The walls were carved with a mural—a timeline of war.
But not just any war.
Her war.
Aeryn stepped closer, breath catching. The carvings showed a flame curling out of a woman’s chest. A rebellion. A child wreathed in fire. A woman in chains. Then… a split path.
Two endings.
One bathed in golden light.
The other swallowed by ash.
She pressed her hand to the center of the mural where the flame split.
The stone was warm.
Kael touched her arm. “What is this?”
Aeryn stared at the mural. “A choice.
They pushed deeper into the ruin.
Each corridor felt tighter than the last. The ceilings lower, the pressure in the air thicker. They passed halls of broken idols, shadowed archways that led nowhere, and doorways sealed with bone glyphs.
Then finally they reached a chamber that breathed.
It exhaled warmth as they approached.
Aeryn stepped forward first, ignoring the burn of her embermark. The door was black stone, its surface unmarred but vibrating faintly beneath her fingertips.
Kael’s voice was quiet behind her. “It knows you.”
“Or it’s afraid of me,” she murmured.
She raised her palm.
The embermark flared, and the door melted open.
Inside, the chamber was vast.
And alive.
Vines grew from the ceiling, twisted and pulsing with dull red veins. Pools of light shimmered across the floor like water, though there was no source. In the center stood a pillar of flame, frozen in place trapped in a glass-like cocoon, flickering as if time itself was trying to breathe through it.
Aeryn stepped toward it, entranced.
Kael held back.
The closer she got, the louder the whispering
became soft at first, then rising to a fever pitch.
Aeryn reached out.
The flame rippled
And pulled her in.
Inside the flame…
She stood on a battlefield.
But not hers.
Not yet.
The sky was blood-red, and the ground littered with corpses in silver armor. A woman stood alone in the center, her hair wild, her embermark pulsing on her throat. She held a child in one arm and a sword in the other.
The woman turned.
Miraen.
Younger. Stronger. Not broken yet.
She looked right at Aeryn.
“You must not choose like I did,” she whispered. “You must not let them split you in two.”
Then the child opened its eyes
And flame swallowed the world.
Aeryn gasped as she fell back, crashing into Kael’s arms. She was trembling, drenched in sweat, heart hammering in her chest.
Kael gripped her. “What did you see?”
She shook her head. “A warning. A future. I don’t know.”
She turned back to the cocoon.
The flame inside was dimmer now.
As if it had shared something.
As if it had remembered.
Later that night…
They made camp just outside the sealed chamber, their torches low, their voices quieter still.
Aeryn sat in silence, staring at the glass-like surface of the flame cocoon. She hadn’t spoken in nearly an hour.
Kael crouched beside her.
“You’ve been somewhere else since we got here.
I saw her again,” she said. “My mother. Not how she is now. How she was before everything burned.”
Kael leaned closer. “What did she say?”
Aeryn’s voice dropped to a whisper. “That I have to choose. But I don’t know between what.”
She closed her eyes.
“And I’m scared that I’ll choose wrong. That I’ll burn everything. You. The child. This war.”
Kael reached for her hand.
“You won’t.”
She looked at him, eyes glistening.
“How do you know?”
He hesitated. Then leaned forward.
“Because your flame listens.”
They didn’t sleep much.
Not just because of the dreams.
But because of the presence the sense that the temple itself was awakening. Not malevolent. Just aware.
As if it had been waiting centuries for Aeryn to arrive.
And now… it was listening.
Far above…
A scout burst into the rebellion’s upper camp, soaked in sweat, barely able to speak.
“They’re coming,” he gasped.
Liora caught him as he stumbled.
Who?”
“The Court.”
He clutched her arm.
“All of them.”
Back inside the temple, Aeryn stirred suddenly, woken by the fire inside her chest.
Kael was already up, pacing, hand on his blade.
“I feel it,” she said.
He turned sharply.
“They’re here.”
She nodded. “The Court.”
He exhaled slowly. “Then we don’t have much time.”
She stood, wrapping her cloak tight.
“And when they come, Kael if I lose control”
He crossed the space between them in two strides.
“You won’t.”
“But if I do”
He gripped her face gently.
“Then I’ll bring you back.”
Far above them, in the tree-shrouded cliffs outside Nar’Vareth, dozens of Court soldiers poured through the bone gates. Their armor shimmered like ice, their blades pulsing with magic drawn from bloodbound oaths.
And at their center walked High Seer Varenth, his hand raised, his eyes glowing white with power.
“Find the girl,” he ordered.
“Take the flame.”
“Kill everything else.”