Some awaken in silence.
Others awaken in fire.
And a few…
awaken to find the world already trembling.
Seraphine did not dream.
Dreams were for the living — for those still tethered to time, to breath, to skin and bone.
She had gone beyond that.
She remembered fire.
Steel.
A man's voice screaming her name.
Then…
The void.
And now —
light.
Her eyes opened.
Slowly.
Above her stretched a cracked ceiling of pale stone. Vines had crawled in through the broken stained glass, painting green shadows across the floor.
She tried to move.
Her body ached. Not from wounds — from centuries of silence.
The room was part of a ruined monastery deep within the Elderglen — a place forgotten by maps and feared by men. It was here that the last of the Flamebound had buried her.
Not in death.
In waiting.
She sat up.
And the wind shifted
Birds scattered from the trees outside. The nearby stream stilled.
And Seraphine heard it — a sound carried not by ears, but by something older.
A scream. Not of a person.
Of a crown.
Her eyes darkened. Her hand went instinctively to her chest.
The seal there — carved into her flesh by Ash Draven himself — had cracked.
The world had changed.
And she had felt him.
She stood.
The sword that had once been buried with her leaned against the wall, untouched by time. A black hilt wrapped in crimson cloth. Its edge still hummed softly with dormant fire.
Solmira, the Blade of Reckoning.
Forged for her.
Wielded only by her.
She stepped out into the forest.
The mist parted.
Her cloak fluttered in the wind, and the world seemed to see her for the first time in ages.
Somewhere to the east, toward Ravenmark, a raven circled the sky — confused, its cry twisted.
The skies had turned strange.
The stars had shifted.
And Seraphine whispered to the wind:
"You woke me too soon, Ash."
"What have you done?"
She began to walk.
Each step sent small tremors through the earth.
She passed no roads. No markers. But the world bent subtly around her presence — trees leaning away, light dimming when she passed beneath it. She was not mortal.
Not fully.
Not anymore.
She found a ruined statue at dusk — once a guardian of the flame temples, now toppled and devoured by moss. She knelt beside it and laid her hand against its stone face.
"They forgot us."
"All of us."
Her voice was neither soft nor sharp.
It was truth.
The statue cracked beneath her palm.
Dust fell like tears.
That night, she made camp beneath the boughs of a dead tree. She did not sleep. Instead, she carved sigils into the earth around her, old symbols meant to draw out the whispers of the world.
They came.
Faint.
Scattered.
But enough.
She saw flickers of Ash — bloodied in a broken chamber.
She saw a crown of shadow.
And she saw herself — not as she was, but as she would be.
Crowned. Feared. Alone.
She did not flinch.
She simply stared at the vision, then whispered:
"If that is the fate you've seen for me, old gods…"
"Then I'll break it myself."
In the distance, wolves howled.
The wind grew sharp.
And the flame inside her chest pulsed once — warm, then cold.
She was coming.
And the world, whether ready or not, would remember Seraphine Nightfall.