The halls of Daiyuan were colder than Aya expected.Not in temperature—but in silence.No whispers. No footsteps. Just polished stone underfoot, fire-glyphs along the walls, and the low hum of power layered into every arch and corridor. The air felt watched.Fei walked beside her, straight-backed and grim. Yuren followed a few steps behind, hood drawn, eyes flicking constantly for danger.At the threshold of the Flame Council chamber, two flamebound sentinels blocked their path.> “Aya Daoren,” one said flatly. “You come at summons. You will enter alone.”Aya looked at Fei, heart pounding.> “Standard intimidation tactic,” Fei muttered. “Don’t show fear. They smell it.”> “And if I start burning?”Fei smiled thinly. “Make it expensive.”---Inside, the chamber curved in a ring of fire-sconces, each flickering with a different hue: red, silver, azure, amber, green, violet. Each one aligned with a sect of the Covenant.Twelve elders sat in high-backed chairs, their pendants glowing with

Night in Daiyuan brought a deceptive stillness.The sky pulsed with soft ember-lights. The towers hummed with regulated flame currents. And yet, beneath the capital’s ordered glow, something old and deadly stirred.Aya sat by the balcony edge of their temporary hideout, legs folded, pendant cradled in her palm. It pulsed now not in rhythm, but in warning.> They’re coming.Jin stood across the rooftop, silent, sharpening a short sword with a curved hilt of blackwood. Yuren was at the threshold, flame-glyphs traced faintly into the doorway. Only Fei paced, unable to sit still.> “We should’ve been gone hours ago,” she muttered. “We’re boxed in.”> “Passages are sealed,” Yuren added. “The underground relay lines stopped pulsing. Someone cut them from the vault.”> “They want us to panic,” Jin said calmly.Aya frowned. “So we don’t give them what they want.”Fei stopped pacing.> “No. We give them what they fear.”---The Pale Blades arrived an hour before midnight.Six of them.They did

Taren struck first.One moment he stood calmly, hand raised in warning. The next, his crimson cloak whipped through the air as a spear of pure flame surged from his palm—fast, precise, lethal.Fei deflected it with a twist of her blade, the recoil singing across her arm.> “Still using council forms,” Taren said, advancing. “Efficient. Predictable.”> “Still hiding behind doctrine,” Fei replied, striking low. “Cowardly.”They clashed again. Sparks exploded where their blades met. Each was fast, sharp, trained in the same lethal arts—but something in Fei had shifted. Her strikes were no longer bound by the patterns the Council had etched into her childhood.She fought with desperation. With choice.Aya tried to move forward to help, but Jin blocked her with a glance.> “Not yet.”Behind them, Yuren activated a defense ward around the temple mouth, his glyphs spinning in mid-air like blades of light. Two Crimson Sashes slammed into the barrier and rebounded, stunned. The ward wouldn’t h

Emberhold was no longer silent.Within hours of Aya seating the High Throne, the air had begun to change. Wind moved through the shattered halls with strange purpose. Lanterns flickered without touch. And the old Daoren sigils—dormant for generations—glowed faintly along the stone walls, as if drawn to life by her presence.Jin stood watch atop the southern rampart, surveying the broken city below. Already, figures approached from the far valleys—exiles, seekers, old warriors who had once served under Daoren banners before the Scorching Wars made such loyalties punishable by death.> “They’re coming,” he said quietly. “One by one.”Fei stood beside him, arms folded. “Not all of them will kneel.”> “They don’t have to. They only need to believe.”Down in the chamber of flame-vaults, Aya sat cross-legged on the blackstone floor, surrounded by the first group of arrivals. A former archivist named Wen, two Ember-path monks with burn scars, and an elderly woman who claimed to be a relic-ca

It began with tremors.Faint at first. Subtle. Like a giant taking slow, deliberate steps beneath the earth.Aya stood in the Emberhold war chamber, listening to emissaries from the northern ranges discuss tactical withdrawals and flame-vault restoration when the ground quivered beneath her boots.Jin paused mid-report, eyes narrowing.Fei had already unsheathed her blade.> “What was that?” Yuren asked from the map table.> “Not natural,” Jin replied. “That’s a cadence. Something marching.”Fei muttered, “Scorchbrand.”Aya’s blood ran cold.She hadn’t forgotten the name from the Pale Scholar’s warning. She just hadn’t expected the Covenant to move this fast—or this ruthlessly.> “How close?” she asked.> “Hours, maybe less,” Jin said. “We need to prepare.”Aya nodded.> “Sound the alarm. Evacuate the lower levels. Gather the Ash-Sworn. We hold the line here—no matter what comes.”---The Scorchbrand didn’t attack like soldiers.They arrived like a storm.Massive silhouettes of molten