The Temple of Dawnfire crowned the highest peak of Solara.

Its spires were carved from white-gold stone, its arches etched with runes older than the kingdom itself. At its heart blazed an eternal flame — a fragment of the Phoenix’s breath, said to have burned since the first dawn of Ayara. To approach it was to feel heat that was not merely of the body, but of the soul.

Here, before the sacred fire, Rael and Sira would be bound.

The hall was silent save for the low hum of the flame. Priests in robes of crimson and saffron formed a circle, their chants a weave of harmony that resonated in the bones. Crystals hung suspended in the air, drifting slowly, shedding threads of light that tangled with the smoke.

Rael stood at the altar, his tunic exchanged for ceremonial armor — plates of gold worked with phoenix-feather motifs, light as air, heavy with meaning. His hand rested upon the hilt of a blade forged from sun-crystal: the Flame-Edge, symbol of his line.

Sira entered from the western arch. She wore no crown, no jewels, only a simple gown woven of living ivy and silver-thread. Flowers bloomed at her hem as she walked, roots curling and withdrawing with each step. Her eyes met Rael’s, and in them he saw not just beauty, but the unshakable patience of the earth.

Lakvenor stood near the pillars, his storm-staff across his back. He shifted restlessly, but when he caught Rael’s glance, he grinned and gave a little shrug — as though to say: you’ve fought Ashborn hordes, you can survive a ceremony.

The high priest lifted his staff, its top crowned by a sphere of crystal burning with inner fire.

“Before flame eternal, we bind sun to soil,” he intoned, his voice echoing as if doubled by unseen voices. “We join not flesh to flesh alone, but essence to essence. For in the weaving of elements, balance is born.”

Rael extended his hand. Sira placed hers upon it. The priest drew a dagger of obsidian, pricked both their palms, and pressed their blood together.

The flame roared.

Not in sound, but in vision.

For an instant, Rael was no longer standing in the temple. He was soaring through skies of endless fire, wings unfurling, the cry of the Phoenix ringing in his chest. He felt the weight of the sun, the ache of eternity.

And beside him — roots plunging through the void into seas of earth and water — was Sira. Her power spiraled green and gold, threads of life twining with his flame. For a moment he thought he saw more: a verdant crystal buried deep within her, pulsing with ancient power. Something vast. Something hidden.

Their hands burned, yet did not burn.

When the vision faded, their blood had sealed into a single sigil across their palms: a flame curling around a root.

Bound.

The priests bowed. The circle dissolved.

But the silence that followed was more telling than any chant. Some gazed with reverence, others with unease. The sacred bond had been forged, yet in the corner of many eyes flickered doubt: what did it mean that fire and earth had joined on the eve of eclipse?

Calithra watched from the shadows of the rear arch, her face unreadable.

Later, when the temple had emptied, Rael and Sira stood alone before the eternal flame. The heat pressed close, like the breath of a living being.

“Do you feel it?” Rael asked softly.

Sira’s gaze lingered on the fire. “I feel… more than I can name. As if the earth within me has met something older. Wilder.” She looked at him then, her voice gentler still. “And you?”

Rael hesitated. In truth, the vision still lingered. The Phoenix’s cry rang in his heart, and with it, a weight he could not yet speak.

“I feel…” He searched for the word, and found only honesty. “…a choice waiting.”

Sira tilted her head. “And will you fear it?”

“No,” he said, though in the silence that followed, he wondered if fear was precisely what the Phoenix demanded.

Outside, the twin eclipses still hung in the sky.

And far away, in the dark citadel of Tenebris, a fallen celestial stirred — his ten soul-avatars whispering as he felt the bond flare across reality.

Ravyn of Shadowspire smiled, as if he had been waiting for this very moment.