The trail wound high into the hills, narrowing with every turn, until the trees fell away and the earth
stretched out like a cracked stone shield. Wind swept across the plateau in slow, deliberate gusts,carrying with it no scent of life—no pine, no animal, no fire.
Only stone.
Torian crested the final ridge and saw it.
The circle.
Twelve standing stones, tall and pale, arranged in perfect symmetry around a flat expanse of gravel
and weathered earth. They rose from the ground like the ribs of some long-dead giant, each one
carved with symbols that time had not erased—spirals, flame-markings, thorn-knots, and names.
Names Torian did not know but felt like echoes in his chest.
Skarn stopped beside him and let out a deep, throaty growl. The fur along his spine rose slightly,
ears pinned back. He took one step forward, then stopped. Then backed away.
Torian turned. "What is it?"
Skarn didn't respond.
He simply stood there, staring at the circle with something close to… fear.
The last time Skarn had feared anything was in the cave, when Torian had freed him.
Now he refused to move forward.
Torian reached for him, but the beast pulled back, a soft sound rising from deep in his chest.
It was not warning.
It was sorrow.
"You're not coming in, are you?"
Skarn looked away.
Torian turned toward the circle. The standing stones loomed like guardians, silent and waiting."I'll come back," he said.
The wind carried his voice nowhere.
He stepped into the circle.
⸻
The world changed.
Not suddenly, not with a jolt—but with a quiet folding of the senses. The moment his boots touched
the center of the circle, the wind stopped. The sky vanished. The stones surrounding him faded to
gray silhouettes, then to nothing.
He stood in a world of smoke and ash.
The ground beneath him felt solid, but there was no horizon. No sky. Just an endless veil of shifting
fog, swirling in slow arcs. It smelled of old fire—wood long since turned to charcoal, bone dust, and
forgotten hope.
Then the ember stirred.
A single pulse from within his chest.
Strong.
Demanding.
A voice followed—not loud, not deep, but layered with echoes. Neither male nor female. Neither kind
nor cruel.
"If the flame chooses you, it will not save you."
Torian turned.
No one stood behind him."You must survive yourself."
Then the fog shifted—and became a hall of mirrors.
Not glass.
Memory.
To his left, a battlefield. Soldiers screaming. A figure cloaked in red flame stood atop a heap of
bodies, fire spewing from their mouth and hands, laughing.
"The war never ends. Only your enemies change."
To his right, a throne room. A flame-bearer in golden armor knelt beside a broken
crown, surrounded by acolytes chanting his name. Flames danced across his
fingertips, but his eyes were hollow.
"What you save will ask for more."
Straight ahead, a field of graves. A flame-bearer sat cross-legged, surrounded by
stones marked only with spirals. Tears streamed down his face as he pressed a burning
hand to his chest, muttering the names of those he couldn't save.
"Even gods are haunted."
Torian stepped back.
"No," he said aloud. "I'm not them."
The battlefield flame-bearer turned to him.
"Not yet."
The king lifted his crown.
"But you will be."
The mourner whispered, louder now."And it will break you."
Torian's heart raced.
The ember in his chest burned hotter—not uncontrolled, but insistent.
He drew his sword.
"You're not real."
The battlefield burned away.
The throne room crumbled.
The graves turned to dust.
The fog returned.
And now, he stood alone in a circle of twelve shadows.
Each one bore the spiral flame.
Each one was him.
One taller. One older. One younger. One cloaked in chains. One with scorched hands.
One missing eyes. One kneeling. One bleeding. One smiling. One screaming.
And one with fire leaking from every pore.
Torian stepped into the center.
The shadows circled him.
The voice returned.
"What is the flame?"He answered without hesitation.
"A test."
"What is its cost?"
"Everything."
"What will you burn?"
Torian swallowed. "Only what I must."
"And if what you must is yourself?"
He hesitated.
Then: "Then I will burn with purpose."
The shadows stopped.
They stared.
Then each one spoke in unison.
"We failed."
Then they vanished.
All except one.
The one bleeding.
It stepped forward, silent.
Lifted a hand.
Offered him something.A tiny spiral of fire.
Not like the ember.
This one was wild.
Hungry.
Waiting to be taken.
Torian reached out—
The fire screamed.
He pulled back.
And the bleeding version of himself smiled.
"The fire you take now will always ask for more."
"The fire you earn will never leave."
Then it disappeared.
The spiral remained.
But it dimmed.
Faded.
And was gone.
Torian was alone again.
No shadows.
No mirrors.Only himself.
Then the ground cracked beneath him.
Darkness swallowed his legs, then his chest, then his throat—
And he fell.
⸻
He woke to rain on his face.
Real rain.
The sky above was storm-gray, and the stones around him had returned.
He lay in the center of the circle, soaked, breathing hard.
His chest still burned—but not painfully.
Warmly.
Skarn stood outside the circle, growling low.
Torian sat up.
And saw his hand.
A mark had been burned into the skin.
A spiral—clean, precise—surrounded by a ring of thorns.
He touched it.
It pulsed with emberlight.
The trial was over.And he had not been given power.
He had been given recognition.
Skarn stepped forward hesitantly, then trotted to him and nudged his shoulder.
Torian reached up and wrapped an arm around the beast's massive neck.
"I saw them," he said. "The ones who failed."
Skarn huffed.
"I won't be them."
A long silence.
Then Skarn did something rare.
He pressed his forehead to Torian's, eyes closed.
And growled low, not in warning, but in promise.
The path forward was longer than either of them could see.
But now, the flame watched him not as a burden…
But as a possibility.