The House of Ironwake had passed its spark down for twelve generations.
Each master named the next.
Each successor lit the flame from the last bearer's hand.
Each flame was loyal.
Bound.
Lineaged.
Until now.
A ceremony was prepared.
Silks tied.
Witnesses gathered.
The flame—held in an ancient brass urn—waited atop the altar.
The master stepped forward, hand extended toward the next in line:
"Today, we pass on our fire—"
But before the rite could finish…
The flame rose.
Lifted.
And turned.
Not toward the heir.
But away.
It hovered silently.
Moved past the line of disciples.
And floated out the window.
At first, they thought it was lost.
But it didn't fade.
Didn't extinguish.
It simply kept moving.
The master collapsed to their knees.
The heir stood speechless.
Someone whispered:
"It refused…?"
But a younger disciple said:
"Maybe it didn't refuse."
"Maybe it just didn't belong to any of us."
The flame drifted into the nearby woods.
It hovered above a forgotten footpath.
There, a gardener bent over new soil.
They had no sect rank.
No claim.
No intention.
And the spark simply stopped nearby—
and stayed.
Back in the Soulstream, the lineage anchor failed for the first time in history.
A new event was recorded:
🔹 Flameform: Legacy Spark Discontinuity
🔹 Trigger: Voluntary self-unlinking from heirline
🔹 Result: Spark remains active, chooses new ambient path
🔹 Classification: The Spark That Refuses to Be Inherited
And the Fire That Waits whispered not in anger, but in joy:
"Some fires do not belong to names…"
"They belong to the path itself."