The forest had grown too quiet.

Birdsong gone. Wind stilled. Even the river near Auren’s campfire whispered no more.

Lyra looked up from her blade, half-sharpened. “Do you feel it?”

He nodded. “Something’s coming.”

And then—the ground shook.

Not a quake. A fall.

Branches snapped like bones. Trees buckled. Leaves fled the sky.

Auren moved first.

In the clearing, smoke curled. Heat danced across the soil. And there, tangled in roots and seared earth, lay a figure neither man nor beast.

It breathed smoke.

Wings—tattered, golden-scaled—twitched with dying embers.
Horns broken. Scales cracked.
A cloak of once-regal crimson clung to its chest, now torn and soaked in ichor like liquid flame.

It looked up—eyes molten gold, slitted like a serpent's but ancient beyond reckoning.

“Knight... of Karmic Flame...” the voice rasped, layered—half human, half something older.

Lyra drew her weapon. “A dragonkin.”

“No,” Auren said. “An ancient one.”

The creature tried to rise. Failed.

And with its collapse, a memory flooded the wind.

A vision—not of this world.

A city in the sky.
Pillars carved from stardust.
Four thrones—empty.
A trial of flame and ice and thunder.
And a scream, carried on wings of war.

The vision shattered.

The dragonkin gasped. “They’re… hunting us… sealing us… removing the past.”

“Who?” Auren asked, stepping closer.

The creature looked at him—not in fear, but with relief.

“You carry the Judgment. I felt it. We all felt it. The moment you woke…”

“I didn’t wake,” Auren said. “I was returned.”

The dragonkin smiled, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

“They'll come for you too... the ones who rewrite fate... the Tribunal is only the gate.”

Before Auren could ask more, the dragonkin raised a shaking hand.

A scale—no larger than a coin—peeled from his chest, glowing faintly. “Take it… from my line… the Flamewings of Serentha. Let the others know... The Last Flame lives.”

His body burst into embers.

Not a scream. Not a death.

A release.

Ash swirled into the sky like a prayer.

Auren held the scale in silence.

It pulsed once.
Then dimmed.

Lyra stepped forward. “What does this mean?”

He stared at the scale, voice like cold iron.

“It means… I’m not the only one Fate is trying to erase.”

“When the old blood burns, the stars shall remember.
For memory is flame—
and flame never forgets.”
                                              — Oath of the Flamewings