She arrived at twilight.
Wearing robes that shimmered like dying starlight.
No footstep disturbed the dust.
No chi marked her soul.
Because she had none.
She had no flame.
No soulwheel.
No breath.
Only memory.
Her name—if it ever existed—was gone.
Some said she was a remnant of the Old Court.
Others claimed she was born when the last Reclaimer flame collapsed.
No one could agree on what she was.
But all agreed on one thing:
She should not be able to cross into the circle.
The seven flamebearers felt it immediately.
Their sparks flickered—not in fear, but recognition.
The sparkless boy lifted his head slowly.
He didn't move.
He didn't question.
He just breathed.
Three pulses.
One pause.
The woman stopped at the edge of the gathering.
Renn whispered, "She's not… alive."
Ashun's flame curled inward. "Then why can we feel her?"
Tenji said softly:
"Because memory walks in her shape."
The woman lowered herself into the dust.
She looked at no one.
She spoke to no one.
And yet—
The air changed.
The boy without flame turned his body slightly toward her.
Then exhaled.
And in that moment—
She inhaled.
For the first time.
Not out of need.
Not out of design.
But out of invitation.
Every flame bent inward.
The seventh pulseless flame—which once shaped only rhythm—moved gently toward her.
It did not light her.
It entered her.
And for one breath—
Memory became presence.
She whispered one line:
"I was not meant to stay."
And the sparkless boy replied:
"Then breathe while you're here."
No one wept.
No one spoke.
They simply remained.
And in that stillness, the woman—
Breathed again.
And for a moment longer than history,
a thing born of memory
became something real.
Far away, in a ruined sky temple, a blind monk woke from a dream and said aloud:
"Something that never lived… just took its first breath."
And in the oldest part of the ash throne's chamber, a piece of stone finally crumbled to dust.
The Fire That Waits whispered:
"Now the flame reaches backward…"
"…and the past accepts the present."