(Seventeen years later )
Tar- A small village in the Cromos Empire)
The hearth cracked softly in the dim room, casting shadows on the stone wall. A battered oil lamp swung gently on a chain above. The rain tapped against shuttered windows like a nervous messenger too afraid to knock.
Three men leaned in close around the scarred wood, each shadow on the wall warped by the firelight like dark ghosts clinging to their backs.
Joras's voice cut through the low murmur.
"You know what I've heard folks? The Flame Emperor sent another thousand soldiers to their deaths. Froze outside the walls of Pagoth."
He was a rugged and weather-worn figure, a man shaped by a life of struggle. His build was broad and sturdy, with a frame used to hard labor. His face was lined, shadowed by a scruffy beard.
Thoram grunted, chewing on a strip of tough bread. A wiry, gaunt man with wild, unkempt hair and a vacant, glass-eyed stare that hardly seemed to focus on anything or anyone for long.
"It was nasty business....up North. The Emperor doesn't seem to give up though - He's either very patient or just foolish. Seven years and nothing to show for it but a pile of dead sons fighting his idiotic wars."
Kyros spat into the hearth. "He won't break Pagoth. Their walls are as hard as their pride. None of these lads he's sending up north will ever make it back.....And even if they do, they will return in pieces, half the man they used to be."
He was a slim man rather than muscular, with a wiry frame that spoke more of agility than brute force.
Joras scoffed."And now we pay for his tantrum. More taxes. Money stolen from the poor by the Emperor's tax collectors.....And what is that money spent on? A bunch of wars we don't even support. More grain taken from our mouths so that he can fund another shitty siege tower that will burn before it even touches their gates."
Kyros leaned forward, the fire in his eyes darker than the one behind him.
"It's not a war anymore. It's vanity. The fat bastard isn't satisfied with the land he already rules."
Thoram nodded. "He will not stop until all the north has fallen. He wants to burn it with the flame that makes him a god."
"A god you say?" Joras snapped."Those priest pigs preach about his divinity just to bask in his fire. But I see him for what he is- a fraud. He's got everyone fooled....but not me."
Kyros looked toward the door, uneasy.
"Easy, Joras. Don't let the beer cloud your head. Careful mate....they say these walls have ears. Talk like this can get you hanged."
"I'm done living in fear," Joras growled. "I'm done wiping the Empire's arse. Sorry but I'm not waiting for the Flame Emperor to take another shit with his tyranny - I will tell him the truth myself if it comes down to it. The only thing keeping that bastard on the throne is fear."
"The only thing keeping us alive," Kyros muttered, "is minding our business."
Joras rose, his knuckles whitened around the edge of the table.
"The taxes are our business, our land is our business. The bastard burned a magistrate alive, for questioning the war.... our freedom is our business."
"They say he died screaming. Took three minutes before he went still."
They fell silent.
Outside, thunder roared far across the plains, like the growl of some ancient beast.
Kyros looked up."I heard people cheered as he burned. Some still believe in the Emperor's cause. Or maybe they just fear his power."
Jorah clenched his jaw. "That's not power. That's rot. The kind that spreads slowly like cancer. You either cut it out or let it eat through the whole body. We are watching it consume us alive."
"You talk like a man planning a rebellion,"Thoram said, his voice sharper than before.
"Maybe."
The room stilled. A hot tension swelled in the air, thick as smoke curling from the hearth.
"You, Joras of Tah? Fight the Flame Emperor?" Thoram asked carefully. "With what? An army of farmers with shovels and pitchforks?"
"Yes. I will start by exposing him for the fraud he is," Joras said, "He claims his line alone wields fire. That only his blood can command it. But it's not true."
Kyros's brows drew close."What are you saying?"
"I'm saying there are others that are not born from his line that can perform fire magic."
"The beer has gotten into your head, Joras. You are sounding like a madman now. No one else can conjure the flame. No one but him and his sons."
Joras's gaze turned toward the darkened hall behind him.
"My son can."
The silence that followed was immediate and thick. Kyros and Thoram were trying to grasp the weight of what Joras had just said. No one could perform fire magic, except for the Emperor's line. So why was Joras speaking such nonsense?
Kyros leaned forward slowly. "Reiner?"
Joras nodded.
Thoram raised a hand in protest."You can't expect us to believe that do you?. Surely you are joking. Fire magic doesn't just appear. It's bred. It's blood. Only the Flame Emperor was chosen by the gods to wield it. That's what the priests say."
"And you believe those pigheaded fools?"
Kyros scoffed."You expect us to take your word?"
Joras's voice lowered to a whisper, almost reverent.
"I've seen him light a candle without a flint. Once....I saw him touch a stone and it heated till it cracked."
The men stared, unsure whether to believe or fear what he was saying.
"Reiner!" Joras called.
There was a short pause that seemed like an eternity to the men sitting at the table. They waited impatiently for the boy who could do the impossible.
The door creaked open with the weight of finality, the iron hinges groaning like bones of the damned. He stepped through - tall, slender, and terrible.
A boy of ten and seven.
His shaved head gleamed like a blade under the amber haze, the pale skin of his face stretched tight under angular bones. His youthful eyes were blackened by shadow, ringed in exhaustion and struggle.
From the next room, Reiner had heard every word. The anger. The bitterness. The hatred aimed like spears at the throne. And now - this. His father dragging him into the heart of treason with a single breath.
He didn't move. Didn't want to. His heart pounded in his chest like a warning drum.
But still, his feet carried him forward, slow and unwilling. The men turned to him - two strangers whose eyes held a mixture of doubt, fear, and curiosity.
"Reiner," Joras said gently, "Show them your magic."
The boy hesitated, swallowing hard. His fingers curled at his sides.
"I don't want to ."
"I know, fear not my boy. These are our friends. Show them what you can do."
Reiner looked at each of them - his father with narrowed eyes, Kyros already stepping back, and Thoram, silent but watching.
Slowly, with trembling hands, Reiner lifted his fingers.
Nothing
Then-
A flicker.
A small flame sparked at the tip of his index finger. It danced, barely larger than the flame of a candle, but it was there- alive, unnatural, and impossibly real.
The men gasped, recoiling slightly.
Then the flame vanished. Reiner lowered his hand.
Silence.
Thoram was the first to speak, voice barely above a whisper. "By the old gods..."
"No way," Kyros murmured, eyes wide open."The boy wields fire."
Thoram crossed himself, pale. " This... this changes everything we know about magic."
Reiner met his father's gaze, his voice tightened, trembling."You said it would stay a secret."
Joras rose from where he sat and placed a hand on his son's shoulder. "It's time for the egg to hatch my boy. It's time we let your fire bring hope to the people again."
Reiner didn't agree. He didn't want to be part of a rebellion. He hated the empire as much as his father did, but not this. Not this kind of talk. He had seen what the Flame Emperor's soldiers did to men with mouths full of fire. Hanged from the gallows. Burned alive like the magistrate. Dragged behind horses through the mud and stone of the town square.
He closed his eyes, heart pounding louder than the men's voices.
"We are going to start a storm the empire will never see coming," Joras said, as he let Kyros and Thoram outside.
"Death to the Flame Emperor," Jorah declared, voice low but fierce as he opened the creaking back door.
"Death to the Flame Emperor," the others echoed—not in defiance this time, but in fear of what they had just seen.
Inside the dim room, the fire had gone low. Reiner stood by the hearth, arms folded, his jaw tight. His eyes, darkened and unreadable, tracked his father with the weight of judgment.
"They will sell us out," he said, his voice flat and quiet.
Joras scoffed, brushing past him.
"You've grown too suspicious for your own good. Kyros and Thoram are loyal. I've bled beside them. They wouldn't dare betray us—not to those dogs in silver armor."
Reiner didn't move."Fear makes man strange. Loyalty dies in whispers, Father."
Joras turned, frowning. "This rebellion needs hope, not paranoia."
Reiner stood alone, watching the shadows shift along the wall.
"They will come for us," he muttered.
And he was right.
Dawn broke not with birdsong, but with steel — the Emperor's soldiers emerging from the mist like death itself, silent and merciless.