The storm outside Aelthar's ruins had settled into a restless snow, as if the sky itself were holding its breath.
Mara stood at the threshold of the ancient chamber, her fingers still tingling from the contact with the second Seal. The others watched in silence—Elira, pale but steady; Adrian, half-buried in dust and thoughts; and Cormac, who leaned against a broken pillar, nursing a gash that ran from shoulder to chest.
No one spoke of the masked figure. No one had to.
"What did you see?" Adrian asked finally.
Mara didn't answer right away. Her mind was still trying to separate what was vision from what was truth. The Seal hadn't just offered her power—it had shown her fragments of a past that didn't entirely belong to her. Some scenes had been drenched in Ilyra's perspective, others felt painfully her own. And one image lingered:
A sun burning black above a bleeding throne.
"A memory," she said at last. "Or a warning."
Elira turned toward the archway. "Then we need to move. If they sent a harbinger, the Empress's forces know you're collecting the Seals. And they'll want to stop you—at any cost."
Mara nodded. "Then let them try."
Cormac gave a humorless grunt. "I suggest we don't wait for the invitation."
They traveled down the winding caverns that led to the base of Aelthar, where a hidden tunnel awaited them—Elira had found it during her scouting, though she'd confessed it had given her a chill she couldn't explain. The tunnel, known in old maps as the Vein of Aithryn, supposedly led under the mountains and out toward the dusk plains beyond.
It was there the next clue lay: The Third Seal, said to rest beneath the light of the Second Sun—an artifact long lost in myth, tied to the ancient race of light-binders known as the Solari.
They emerged from the mountain hours later into a broken landscape of white and glassy blue—ice stretching to the horizon like a frozen sea. But above them, the sky glowed with two suns.
One real.
One—impossibly—was not.
It hovered faintly behind the clouds like a ghost of fire, dimmer, ethereal, and shifting.
"The Second Sun," whispered Elira, her breath catching. "It's real."
Adrian frowned. "I thought it was just Solari symbolism. I didn't think... it actually existed."
"It doesn't," Mara said. "At least, not in this plane."
They set up a temporary camp on the ice shelf, careful to ward it with the runes Adrian etched into the ground. Even as their fire burned, the false sun above them pulsed faintly—as if aware of their presence.
Cormac kept his axe close as he walked the perimeter. "We're being watched."
Elira, sitting beside Mara, nodded. "It's not the Empress's scouts. Not yet. But this land belongs to something older."
Mara tilted her head to the sky. "Then we'll make it listen."
That night, while the others slept, Mara stepped away from camp. She approached the false sun's shimmer—drawn to it like a tide to the moon. As she stood beneath its light, her shadow split into three, each moving at a different rhythm.
And from the air, a voice whispered—not from within the Seal, but from the false sun itself:
"You carry the Seal of Flame. And yet you burn cold."
She spun, reaching for her blade, but no one was there.
"The third awaits in the City Beneath Light. But beware, Mara of Ash—what sleeps there does not wake kindly."
The shimmer pulsed, and then the false sun vanished like a dream.
Mara returned to camp with her jaw tight and her pulse racing.
By morning, they moved.
---
The journey to the City Beneath Light was not marked by a map, but by memory—fragments Mara had drawn from the Seal and whispers Adrian unearthed in ancient texts. They traveled west, guided by the shimmer that occasionally returned to the sky, like a spectral torch.
For days, they passed through wastelands of pale rock and strange glass forests that sang when the wind passed through them. In one such grove, they were attacked by Whiteskins—creatures born of old magic and starvation, their eyes blind and white, their skin stretched tight over bones. Mara's power flared to protect her friends, but she was careful not to unleash it fully.
Not yet.
One night, as they rested beneath an arch of frost stone, Elira approached Mara with narrowed eyes.
"You're hiding something."
Mara stared into the fire. "I'm hiding many things."
"I don't mean the Seals. I mean you. That masked figure… it called you the 'vessel.' Not just the bearer."
Mara met her gaze. "And you think I'm dangerous."
"I think you're changing."
Mara didn't argue.
Because she was.
---
They reached the ruins of Sol'kareth—the City Beneath Light—at dusk on the seventh day. The city wasn't built, but grown, carved directly from the mountain's bones with magic lost to time. Golden towers pierced the sky, wrapped in vines of crystal. The entire city glowed faintly, basking in the echo of the false sun now fully visible above it.
Adrian exhaled. "It's beautiful."
"No," said Elira. "It's a tomb."
They entered through the Gate of Sunglass, where two Solari statues stood, each holding a blade of pure light that hadn't dimmed in centuries. The streets were eerily clean. No corpses. No decay.
Only silence.
They found the temple at the city's heart. Inside, beneath a dome carved with stars and flames, floated the Third Seal—a tear-shaped gem suspended in an orb of pure radiance.
Mara stepped forward—but the moment she did, the city reacted.
Light surged across the floor, forming symbols around them. The temperature dropped. The sky outside darkened unnaturally fast.
Then came the sound: not a roar, not a shriek—but music. Soft, discordant, and utterly inhuman.
The guardian had awoken.
From behind the altar, light bled into form—shaping a being of living brilliance, with no face, only a burning crown and a sword of mirrored flame.
"Elira, fall back!" Adrian shouted.
But it was too late.
The guardian lunged.
Cormac met it first, blade raised—but the sword passed through him like mist. He dropped to his knees, gasping.
Adrian tried to cast a binding glyph, but the light burned through it.
Only Mara stood, unmoving.
The Seal within her pulsed.
And the guardian paused.
"You are flame… and shadow," it said, its voice like chimes in a storm.
"You guard the Seal," Mara said. "I've come to claim it."
"You are not worthy."
"I don't need your permission."
She drew her dagger, the one gifted by the Shade Monks of Sareth, and carved a rune into her own palm. Her blood hit the ground—and the air split.
The guardian howled.
It lunged again—but this time, Mara did not dodge.
She stepped forward—and embraced the light.
The chamber exploded in brilliance.
When the others blinked away the glare, Mara stood alone, her hand on the Third Seal.
The guardian was gone.
Or rather—part of her now.
She turned to them slowly, eyes glowing faintly.
"I have it."
Elira stared, stunned. "Mara… what did you just do?"
"I didn't fight it," she said. "I accepted it. The guardian was not trying to stop me. It was trying to judge me."
Cormac coughed, wincing. "Well, glad you passed."
Adrian looked at her warily. "That makes three. How many more?"
"Four," Mara whispered. "And each one is waking the part of me that was buried. The part I'm not sure I want to meet."
She closed her hand around the Seal.
Above them, the Second Sun shimmered—and this time, it whispered not a warning.
But a welcome.