The sun never truly rose in the Vale of Cradleglass.
Kael stood at the edge of the bridge that led from the palace ruins to the outer city, the gauntlet on his arm simmering with quiet heat. The girl—Vessel of the Inner Flame—walked behind him, barefoot and silent, her eyes distant as if still dreaming.
Elira moved beside her, protective but wary. No one had spoken much since the Warden shattered, its mirrored body collapsing into dust, its final whisper still echoing in Kael's head:
> "Not all fire saves. Some was meant to consume."
Kael's hand flexed. The sigil left behind on the palace steps still burned on the back of his memory—a spiral of flame with an eye in the center. It hadn't been there before.
"She hasn't spoken," Elira said.
Kael didn't answer.
"She's awake. She's walking. But she hasn't said a single word. Not even her name."
Kael turned to look at the girl. Her hair shimmered in the false starlight of the realm, and wherever her bare feet touched, the glass cracked—just faintly, just enough to whisper.
"She will," he finally said. "When it's safe."
Elira frowned. "From what?"
Kael looked past the bridge.
"To herself."
---
They found a cavern just outside the heart of the city—high up and hidden. The glass here was darker, colored like obsidian, and it distorted their reflections into jagged, monstrous silhouettes.
Kael built a fire out of old roots buried beneath the stone. Strangely, they burned.
The girl sat cross-legged across from the flames. Elira tried giving her dried fruit. She didn't take it.
"I think she's mute," Elira said quietly.
"No," Kael replied. "She remembers too much."
Elira blinked. "You mean…"
"She's seen what the fire showed her. What it made her do. She's not silent because she can't speak—she's silent because she's afraid of what she might say."
They sat in silence a long time after that.
Then the girl finally looked at them and spoke, voice no louder than the crackle of embers.
"My name is Sera."
---
Night in the glass realm didn't end. It bent. It stretched into long hours where time felt wrong.
Kael dreamt, for the first time in days.
He stood in a corridor of stars.
Voices whispered in a dozen languages. Flames flickered along the walls—not normal fire, but golden, red, violet, and silver. Each pulse brought pain. With every heartbeat, another memory poured into him:
A hand reaching through fire.
A crown broken in two.
His mother's voice screaming something he couldn't understand.
And standing at the end of the corridor—cloaked in deep violet armor—was a figure with a sword notched in jagged edges. The same sigil burned in its chest: spiral flame with an eye.
"You're too late," the figure said. "The truth is already loose."
Kael's body felt heavy. He stepped forward anyway.
"Who are you?"
"I am what you could be," the voice replied. "If you keep pretending you're still human."
---
Kael woke with a start. His gauntlet burned against his skin even though he wasn't wearing it. The air was thick with pressure.
He looked to the fire. Elira was still sleeping.
Sera sat at the edge of the cave, her back to him, gazing down at the city.
Kael approached.
"I saw them," she said before he could speak. "Your parents. Or what's left of them."
Kael froze.
Her voice didn't tremble. Her eyes didn't blink. But her fingers twitched, like something inside her was unraveling slowly.
"I didn't want to. But the Warden made me watch. It kept showing me your face… and theirs. Burned. Broken. Bound in a palace that isn't real."
"Where?" he asked.
Sera closed her eyes.
> "The City Beneath the Veil. Where memory feeds the sky."
Kael inhaled slowly.
He'd heard those words before—once, in a ruined text buried in a monastery beneath his home city. A place that existed in legend. A place said to sit between realms, feeding off forgotten truths.
That was where they'd taken them.
That's where he would go next.
---
The next day, they walked again—toward the rift. Sera had drawn a map of light with her fingers in the air, showing them the seams of the realm.
"Don't let the sky fool you," she warned. "It shifts. It lies."
Elira glanced up. "Not comforting."
Kael said nothing.
They traveled along a spiral of fractured streets, past still-screaming statues and roads that looped back unless you walked with your eyes closed.
They reached the edge of the realm by nightfall.
And waiting for them at the gate—wrapped in black wind and wearing a broken mask—was the same figure from before.
The one who had warned him after the burned valley.
"I told you the gods were watching," it said.
Kael stepped forward.
"You were right."
The masked one tilted its head. "You still don't remember my name, do you?"
Kael stared. "No."
"That's good," the figure replied. "Because if you did, you'd already be broken."
Sera stepped beside Kael. "He's ready now."
"I doubt that," the figure said. "But the Veil won't wait. The Ashbound are stirring. You'll need more than fire next time."
It held out a silver shard.
Kael took it.
The moment he did, the sky above them split—gently this time, like paper tearing softly—and a doorway of light opened above the cliffside.
Sera looked afraid. "It's unstable."
Kael held up the gauntlet. "It won't matter."
Elira took his hand. "Together."
And they jumped.
---
They fell through memories.
Kael saw himself as a boy—laughing, sword in hand, sparring with his father. Then crying, clutching his sister's locket. Then dying, flame tearing him apart from within.
Each memory cut deeper.
But Elira's voice held him steady.
He emerged on the other side with fire at his fingertips and a scream in his throat.
They landed on soft earth. Real earth.
Trees. Wind. Sky. Stars that didn't twist.
Kael collapsed, gasping.
They were back in the mortal realm.
But not home.
Ahead, beyond the ridge, burned a forest with white trees and no leaves. Smoke curled into a symbol that twisted itself into flame and then… an eye.
Sera groaned behind them. "It's already begun."
Kael stood.
"Then we're not late."