Ashes Of Aetheria

Name: Ashes Of Aetheria
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)

Harol

Others | Ongoing

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A teenage survivor named Kael discovers a relic tied to ancient fire-magic.He journeys through the ruins of Eldrinth, guided by whispers of a forgotten power called the Eternal Flame.Haunted by memories of the kingdom's fall to dragonfire, Kael seeks meaning, purpose, and truth.....

Thriller Suspense Fantasy

Chapter 5 Embers In The Blood

07-26 18:36

Chapter 1 The Flame In The Snow

The first snow of the season came silently.

It fell over the broken spires of Eldrinth like a white veil pulled across the corpse of a forgotten god. Where once stood towers carved with the runes of a golden age, there remained only blackened stone and twisted iron ribs, thrust upward like the bones of a dying beast.

Aetheria was a land of contradictions - of fire buried in ice, of skyships sailing over burnt fields, of myths that lived beneath every cobblestone. And yet, even here, in this place where time bent like heat in the summer air, the snow still fell with a kind of quiet authority. It blanketed everything, from the scorched remains of the royal citadel to the cracked statues of saints long since disavowed.

Among the ruins, a figure stirred.

Wrapped in a tattered red cloak and hunched against the wind, the boy made his way down what used to be the King's Promenade. The wide avenue, once filled with merchants and minstrels, was now a graveyard of memories. Marble arches broken in half. Sigils defaced with soot. Even the fountains, once blessed with flowing firewater from the Temple of the Embermother, were frozen solid.

The boy's name was Kael.

He was fourteen winters old. Maybe fifteen. He didn't really know. Time had stopped making sense after the Fall. He remembered fire, mostly. And screaming. And his mother's voice, frantic in the darkness, telling him to run.

He had run. Through the screaming city. Through the forests that howled with wolves and worse. Through the skeletal remains of villages razed by the Crimson Guard. Always running.

But today, for the first time in a long time, Kael wasn't running.

He was searching.

He reached the old plaza, where once a great pyre had burned in celebration of the Solstice. Now only char and ash remained. At its center stood a strange relic: a brazier that had refused to go cold.

The Eternal Flame.

Even as snow settled around it, the fire inside flickered warmly. It did not melt the snow, nor did it burn the air around it. It simply existed - out of place, out of time - defiant against the creeping death of winter.

Kael stepped toward it slowly. His breath fogged in the air, and his boots crunched over broken glass and old bones. He pulled back the hood of his cloak.

A face emerged - pale, dirt-streaked, with sharp eyes that had seen too much and understood too little.

He knelt by the flame...

"I found it," he whispered. "You were right."

He reached into his satchel and pulled out a shard of something that glowed faintly - a crystal, no larger than a plum, its surface cracked like a spider's web. He held it toward the flame.

Nothing happened.

Kael waited. The wind howled around him, swirling snow in eddies, but the flame burned steady, indifferent to the world.

"Please," he said, his voice cracking. "I came all this way."

Still, nothing.

The crystal began to dim in his hand.

Frustration surged in him. He gritted his teeth and shouted, "You were supposed to show me! You're supposed to-!"

The wind suddenly died.

The snowflakes hung suspended in the air.

The flame twisted upward like a tongue of gold, then flared blue. Kael flinched, nearly dropping the crystal - which had begun to thrum like a heartbeat. There was a low hum now, deep and ancient, resonating from the very stones beneath his feet.

Then, a voice - not spoken, but felt - echoed in his mind.

"The spark endures."

Kael gasped. The flame leapt higher, casting his shadow against the surrounding ruins. His eyes went wide.

The crystal burst with light, and Kael was thrown backward.

He landed hard in the snow, ears ringing. When he sat up, the flame had returned to its usual shape - quiet, controlled. But something had changed.

Kael reached for the crystal. It no longer glowed, but it felt warm - impossibly warm for something that had been in the snow.

And then he saw them.

Footprints. In the snow behind him. Leading to the flame.

But they weren't his.

Someone had been watching...