The Thirteenth Ember - Chapter 49: Chapter 49

Nar’Vareth Temple, Lower Depths
The walls shook.
Not with the groan of time, but the thunder of force. Somewhere far above, the world split open.
Aeryn bolted upright, flame flaring across her palm before her mind caught up with her body. Her embermark burned hot and sharp, the veins beneath it glowing like coals in dark water.
Kael was already standing, blade drawn, his body taut as a bowstring.
“They’ve breached the upper level,” he said, voice low and deadly calm.
She stood slowly, her cloak falling around her. The cocooned flame at the heart of the chamber pulsed brighter responding to her heartbeat, to the tension in the air.
To the bloodlust rising from above.
How many?” she asked.
Kael didn’t answer.
Because the stone behind them began to bleed.
Not with blood but with light. Cold, silvery threads seeped through the cracks, crawling along the floor like veins of ice. Glyphs began to glow on the chamber walls Court sigils.
“They’re sealing the exits,” he growled.
Above Nar’Vareth Outer Gates
Dozens of soldiers poured into the temple like a silver tide. Their armor shimmered with wards, blades etched with incantations. Some floated across the cracked stone, unbound by gravity, their magic pulsing with each step.
And leading them
High Seer Varenth.
His eyes burned white. A crown of flame unnatural, unnatural hovered above his brow. A living sigil. A mockery of the Emberborn gift.
“Fan out,” he commanded. “Don’t kill her. Yet. Her child must quicken first.”
Behind him, two twin mages whispered in tandem, summoning a crystal beast from thin air something without a name, forged to devour flame.
Back below Kael
The moment the first tremor reached the chamber, Kael’s breath shifted.
Something inside him something he had trained to suppress for years uncoiled. His skin felt too tight. The old markings on his back burned beneath his shirt, long-dormant sigils branded into him by the Order during his exile.
But it wasn’t fear that surged through him.
It was power.
Ancient. Buried.
His eyes narrowed as he stepped forward, standing between Aeryn and the corridor.
“You’ll need to go through me,” he murmured to no one yet—but they would come.
Aeryn looked at him.
“Kael your arms”
He looked down.
And saw them glowing.
Not with fire.
With shadow.
Dark ribbons of ethereal energy were coiling around his forearms, wrapping him in veils of heatless smoke. His pulse slowed. His hearing sharpened. The corridor ahead bent subtly not with movement, but under his perception.
He could hear the Court before they arrived.
He could feel their hearts beating.
Aeryn
Something inside her twisted.
At first, she thought it was fear or the child but no. This was different.
The cocooned flame in the center of the chamber
began to pulse, faster and faster, mimicking her heart rate.
And then
A second rhythm.
Another heartbeat.
Not hers.
Not Kael’s.
The child.
It was no longer sleeping.
Aeryn staggered, bracing herself against the stone. The embermark on her chest surged with light not steady now, but wild, pulsing in arcs across her skin.
She felt a sudden burst of emotion that wasn’t hers.
Anger.
Protective, violent, furious.
The child felt the threat above.
And it responded the only way it knew how
With flame.
A surge of heat radiated outward, slamming into the walls like a wave. Glyphs flared and shattered. The air screamed.
Kael turned, shielding her as the blast roared past him not harming him, but disorienting everything else.
Aeryn dropped to one knee, gasping.
“I can’t control it,” she whispered.
Kael knelt beside her, gripping her hand.
“You don’t have to. I’ll hold them. You hold
The Court arrives
The first wave of soldiers reached the lower corridor.
And they did not expect Kael.
They expected a flame-wielder. A girl. Perhaps a seer.
They did not expect a man who moved faster than thought.
Kael surged forward, his blade crackling with dark energy. The first strike severed a soldier’s blade arm before the man even registered movement. The second collapsed a mage’s shield into dust.
The shadows around Kael twisted into armor.
Every time he moved, the air around him darkened not with smoke, but with null light. Flame magic flickered and died when it touched him.
They tried to circle him.
He smiled grimly.
Bad idea.
He turned his body sideways, slammed a fist into the stone wall runes detonated around his knuckles and the explosion knocked six soldiers across the corridor.
The twins screamed spells in unison calling down shards of ice from the ceiling.
Kael raised one hand.
And the shadows devoured the ice before it landed.
Then he threw his blade not at the twins
But at the wall behind them.
It shattered into a column of falling stone.
Crushing them both.
Back in the chamber
Aeryn stood slowly, breathing ragged.
The child’s power was raw. Not fire, not magic but something woven of both.
It did not yet speak.
But it wanted.
To be free.
To protect.
To burn.
The cocoon in the center of the chamber cracked, a thin line of light cutting through the glass-like surface.
Whatever was inside
It was starting to wake.
Kael staggered back into the chamber, blood on his arms, eyes wide.
“They’re regrouping,” he said. “With wards now. They’ll be back.”
Aeryn’s face was pale.
“They won’t stop.”
“No,” he said. “They won’t.”
A long silence stretched between them.
Then Aeryn took his hand and placed it on her belly.
“Then neither will we.”
Far above, Varenth stepped into the ruined corridor, eyes narrowing.
He looked at the blood.
At the ash.
And at the shattered glyphs burned into the stone.
“She’s stronger than we thought,” he said.
One of his captains nodded. “Should we fall back?”
Varenth looked toward the flame rising through the cracks in the floor. He smiled.
“No. We let her burn. And then… we bury her in it.”