The winds of Serentha had changed.

The crows were quieter. The sky, bruised with approaching dusk, wept no color. Even the ghosts had retreated—whispers drawn back like breath before a scream.

Auren felt it in his bones. The same way a swordsman feels a blade before it's drawn. Not a threat. Not yet.
But promise.

They camped at the outskirts of the last ruined tower, what Lyra called “safe enough” to rest. She tended the fire, humming a half-remembered tune, while Auren sat cross-legged on a stone slab—his sword resting across his knees.

“You're not sleeping,” Lyra said without looking up.

“The flame’s restless.”

“Or maybe it’s you.”

He didn’t respond. She had a way of pulling truth out of silence.

In the shadow of that calm, it struck.

A scream—not of pain, but of warning—cut the wind in half. Lyra jumped to her feet. Auren rose slower. He already knew what it was.

She came through the woods like a living curse.

Hair like ash, skin pale as bone, eyes burning with a red so deep it bled into the air around her. She moved like a whisper—graceful, hungry, patient.

The serpent curled around her shoulders hissed like a hymn.

“So,” she said, smiling as if greeting an old lover. “You’re alive.”

“Do I know you?” Auren asked, drawing his blade.

“Not yet,” she whispered. “But you killed me once. Or someone who wore your name did.”

Lyra stepped beside him.

“Who is she?”

“Trouble.”

“Not trouble,” Lythera said softly, drawing twin curved daggers. “Punishment.”

The battle that followed was less a fight and more a dance written in blood and instinct.

Auren struck like lightning—sharp, precise, divine.
But Lythera was faster.

Not stronger. Not more powerful.

Just crueler.

She fought to break his rhythm, to unmake his focus, to expose him. Every move she made was aimed at his flame—his fear of it, his doubt in it.

“I see it in you,” she hissed, parrying a heavy strike. “You don’t trust the fire. You wear it like a borrowed crown.”

“And you wear death like perfume,” he snapped.

She laughed.

“Flatterer.”

As they clashed, Lyra circled—looking for a chance. But Lythera’s serpent snapped at every opening.

Then—pain.

Auren faltered. A dagger kissed his shoulder, slipping between plates. His blood hissed against cold stone.

“There it is,” Lythera purred. “You do bleed.”

She raised her second blade to finish it—

And that was her mistake.

Because she smiled.

And in that instant, Auren stopped holding back.

The karmic flame surged. It roared—not in rage, but in purpose.

His eyes lit like dawnfire. His blade ignited with sacred runes.
He didn't remember how he knew the form—but his body moved with memory older than his soul.

One clean strike.
Not wild. Not loud.

Just… perfect.

The serpent shrieked. Lythera was flung back, rolling across the clearing, blood trailing in ribbons.

She looked up, dazed, gasping.

“Ah… there he is.”

Then vanished in smoke.

Auren fell to one knee, breathing hard. Lyra caught him, clutching his shoulder, eyes wide.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, trembling.

But something had changed.

For the first time, he didn’t fear the flame.

He listened to it.

Far away, in the obsidian halls of Ob’Kareth, Valek smiled.

“He’s beginning to remember.”

“Memory is not always recalled in thought.
Sometimes, it returns in the way we bleed.”
                                 — Flamebearer’s Creed