The wind screamed through the broken stone of Emberpoint Tower. It carried dust and old ash across the desolate landscape known as the Ashen Veil—a gray sea of stillness that swallowed sound, swallowed light, and, some claimed, swallowed souls. Kesh had never put much stock in such stories. He'd lived in this tower for nearly five years, longer than any Watcher in the past century, and he had yet to meet a soul, swallowed or otherwise.
He stoked the dead brazier anyway.
Not because he believed it would catch—it never did. But because routine was the only anchor he had left. Every morning, just before dawn, he would climb the winding stairs, step out onto the highest platform, and poke around the cold stones with his iron poker, as if somewhere in the coals, a spark remained.
It was just another dawn when he found it.
A glow. Faint, nestled beneath a thick layer of soot, but unmistakably alive. Kesh froze, afraid to breathe. The ember pulsed once, like the beat of a dying heart. Then again, stronger.
He dropped to his knees, staring. In all his years—in all anyone's years since the Ashfall—no fire had ever kindled here. The flame gods had died, their temples cracked, their priests turned to ash or madness. And yet, here it was: a living ember.
Kesh didn't sleep that day.
He built a protective wall of stone around the brazier and sat watch, his old spear across his lap. He didn't eat, save a dry crust of bread. The ember stayed lit. It shouldn't have. But there it was, like a memory refusing to fade.
On the second night, she arrived.
Kesh saw her through the haze of ashfall—a lone figure approaching from the veil. Cloaked in gray, face veiled, her steps sure despite the loose shale. Travelers never came this way. There was nothing left west of Emberpoint but ruin and scorched bones.
He met her at the base of the tower with spear in hand.
"You're lost."
"No," she said, voice low. "I've found something."
She looked past him, toward the summit. Toward the ember.
He blocked her path. "Who are you?"
"A scholar," she said. "Call me Aris. I study forgotten divinities."
Kesh didn't lower his spear. "The flame gods are dead."
"So say the men who feared their return."
That night, she stayed at the foot of the tower. Kesh allowed it—barely. He sat by the brazier with the ember and tried to ignore the way it brightened slightly in her presence.
The dreams began soon after.
Kesh saw a great forge beneath the world, massive bellows breathing slow and heavy. A figure stood within, an outline of fire and steel, whispering in a language he had never heard but somehow understood. Wake. Return. Ignite.
He woke with soot on his hands.
Aris waited for him that morning. "You heard it, didn't you? The voice."
"A dream."
"A call," she corrected. "The ember is a spark of the First Flame. One of the old gods is not dead. Only slumbering."
Kesh turned away. "If it wakes, so will the firestorms. The Ashfall nearly ended the world."
"And yet the world grows colder every year. The winds bite deeper. The harvests fail. The balance is broken. You think the fire gods burned too bright. I say we burned too low."
Kesh remembered the stories. Of cities melted, forests turned to glass. But he also remembered the long winters, how children in the valleys died clutching cold stones, their breath stolen by the silence.
He returned to the ember.
It was growing. Slowly. He could feel its warmth now, a gentle pressure in his chest like longing.
"What would you do with it?" he asked Aris.
"Take it into the Ashen Veil. There is a place buried beneath the center, a shrine older than the world. If the ember is placed in the forge-heart there, the First Flame may rise again."
"And burn us all?"
"Or save us."
The decision haunted him. Until the third night.
The ember flickered. Dimmed.
It was dying.
Kesh wrapped it in cloth and placed it in a steel lantern. Aris said nothing, only nodded when he passed her. She followed him into the Veil.
The ash was ankle-deep. Cold as snow. The wind whispered secrets neither dared repeat. Shadows moved at the edge of their vision, but nothing approached. The ember lit their way.
At the Veil's center, they found it: a crater filled with jagged black stone. And at the bottom, a sealed door of charred bronze, marked with a symbol Kesh had seen only in dreams—a flame within a circle.
The door opened to their touch.
Inside, the temple still lived. Machinery groaned. Chains hung from the ceiling. A massive forge, long dead, waited.
Aris approached the forge-heart. She turned to Kesh, eyes shining with something more than light.
"Will you place it?"
Kesh hesitated.
"Why me?"
"Because I carry the spark," she said. "But you carry the choice."
He stepped forward. Held out the lantern. The ember pulsed, brighter than ever. He removed it, fingers burning.
And placed it in the forge.
There was silence.
Then a sound like a breath taken after drowning. The forge shuddered. Light spilled from every crack. The walls trembled.
The First Flame stirred.
Kesh fell to his knees. Aris stood tall, her veil gone, her skin marked with glowing runes, her eyes twin infernos.
"You chose," she said.
Then everything went white.
When the world blinked, Emberpoint Tower was empty. The brazier was cold. The Ashen Veil glowed faintly at its center, like coals beneath gray dust.
Some say they saw a figure walking west, into the fire.
Some say the gods have returned.
But most never knew anything had changed.
Not yet.