The journey north was unlike anything Mara had imagined.
The sky grew darker with every step, not because of the falling ash—but because of the weight in the air, like the land itself remembered something it was trying to forget. Trees stood scorched and silent. Rivers had long since dried to cracked beds of black stone. The only sound was wind, whistling through dead leaves like a ghost's breath.
Mara walked ahead of the others, her hand occasionally flickering with fire as if the Heart pulsed in response to the land around her.
Serai kept a steady pace, though her eyes never stopped scanning the horizon. "This region was once called Virelda," she said, breaking a long silence. "Before the Ember Wars, it was sacred ground."
Talon looked unimpressed. "Now it's a graveyard."
"No," Serai replied. "Worse. It's buried memory."
Mara felt it too—something beneath the soil, deep and ancient, watching.
They camped that night beneath a crumbled stone archway carved with forgotten runes. As Talon sharpened his blades and Serai redrew their protective sigils, Mara wandered toward a mound of ash where a tree had once stood.
And there—half-buried—she found it.
A mask. Smooth, bone-white, cracked through the middle. She reached for it, and as her fingers touched the surface, a vision struck her like a thunderclap.
---
Flame. Screaming. The sky bleeding fire.
A girl—herself, but younger.
A voice: "Don't forget who you are."
The mask on a man's face—
A man with fire in one hand and a sword in the other.
He turned to her.
"Mara, run!"
---
She fell backward, gasping. Talon rushed to her side, blade drawn. Serai looked at the mask and froze.
"That's not just a relic," Serai said softly. "That's a memory anchor. You touched something from your past."
Mara swallowed hard. "That was my father."
Serai stepped closer. "You remember?"
Mara nodded. "Not clearly. Just… flames. A mask. And him telling me to run."
Serai looked toward the horizon, where jagged mountains rose against the ember sky. "Then we're closer than I thought."
"To what?" Talon asked.
Serai's answer came like a whisper: "To the Vault of Cinders. Where the truth sleeps."
Mara clenched the mask in her hands. The ember in her chest warmed, but it didn't burn.
Not this time.
"I need to know," she said.
And somewhere beyond the mountains, the Vault stirred—as if it, too, remembered her name.
---