The dream came again.
But this time, it wasn't the throne, or the flame, or the mirror.
It was her father.
He stood at the edge of a blackened field, ash swirling in the wind, his eyes shadowed beneath a crown she had never seen before. Not the Crown of Cinders—something older. Something colder. Fire with no warmth.
He didn't speak.
He only extended a hand… and when she reached for it, the ash devoured him.
Seris jolted awake, drenched in sweat. The room was too quiet. Even the flames in the hearth had gone still.
Outside her door, the palace slept.
But something in her bones said the past had just woken.
---
By dawn, the Ember Council was in disarray again.
Arin, Kaelen, and Seris stood before Queen Alaryss—flanked now by a small cadre of trusted flamewardens and mirror mages who'd defected after the last breach.
"The Mirror Queen is your sister," Seris said quietly.
Alaryss didn't flinch.
"She was lost to me long before she took that name," the Queen said. "She was marked. The silver flame—curse of the glassborn. Her birth brought shame to our house. Our father ordered her removed from the line of succession. When she vanished, I believed it a mercy."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Seris demanded.
"Because I feared you'd see yourself in her."
"I do," Seris said. "That's the problem."
The Queen's expression cracked for the first time. She looked… tired. Haunted.
"I have lived long enough to know this: prophecy does not choose the worthy. It chooses the willing. And those who answer its call do so at great cost."
"Then help me stop her," Seris said.
Alaryss hesitated. Then nodded.
"We'll need the Ember Archive," she said. "And the one who guards it."
Arin blinked. "You don't mean—"
"I do."
---
The Ember Archive was a tomb.
Built into the roots of Solvyris itself, the library was older than the throne, carved from obsidian and volcanic glass. Runes glowed faintly in the walls. Voices—trapped in flame—whispered ancient truths.
The keeper of this place was known only as Ashra.
She met them at the threshold, robed in scorched silk, her eyes like embers floating in coal.
"You seek knowledge best left buried," Ashra said.
Seris stepped forward. "We seek the twin flame."
At that, Ashra's expression shifted.
She gestured them inside.
---
Within the heart of the archive, they found it.
An ancient scroll, sealed in wax with the mark of the first Flame Sovereign.
Kaelen broke the seal.
Seris read aloud:
> "When the twin flames rise—one of ember, one of mirror—the world shall burn unless bound. Only the chosen bearer of both crowns may halt the collapse. But to wear them both is to die a thousand deaths… unless the third fire awakens."
"Third fire?" Arin whispered.
Ashra nodded.
"The Secret Flame. A fire not born of flame nor mirror. One born of choice."
Seris frowned. "What does that mean?"
But Ashra only looked at her, ancient sadness in her face.
"You'll know. When it calls."
---
Outside the Archive, the world cracked open.
A surge of mirror magic ruptured the sky—ripping a rift above Solvyris, and raining down silver fire across the palace.
The Mirror Queen had arrived.
Seris sprinted toward the highest tower with Kaelen at her side, both moving through chaos—flamewardens clashing with mirror-wraiths, skyborn guards loosing thunder-arrows into the fray.
Atop the tower, she saw her.
The Mirror Queen stood on nothing—hovering over the city on a platform of silver flame.
"Daughter of fire," she called.
Seris faced her, heart roaring.
"Aunt."
"Will you surrender the Crown of Cinders?"
"Never."
"Then I will take it," the Mirror Queen said. "And leave this world in beautiful ruin."
She raised her hand.
Silver fire speared down—
—and Kaelen leapt in front of Seris.
The bolt struck him square in the chest.
He dropped.
"No—!" Seris screamed.
The mirror queen vanished in a flicker of light.
Seris fell to Kaelen's side.
He was alive—barely. Breathing shallow. The silver flame still burned in his wound, eating at his aura.
"No, no, no," she whispered.
His eyes fluttered open. "You have… to stop her…"
"I will," Seris said, fire rising behind her eyes.
"And Seris…?"
"Yes?"
His lips curved, faint.
"You're the only flame… that never scared me."
Then he passed out.