The words burned on the page, glowing with heat but not destroying the parchment. As Mara stared, the flame shifted—shaping itself into her father's handwriting, elegant but scarred by haste.
Talon and Serai watched in silence, the air thick with tension. The Vault had gone quiet, like the very fire was holding its breath.
Mara read aloud.
---
"To my daughter, should the fire ever find you…"
You were never meant to carry this.
I never wanted the Heart to pass to you. I sealed it away, hoping the world would forget, that you would grow free—unburned by what I became.
But fire remembers.
I was not always the Hollow King. I was once Kael Vaelryn, sworn guardian of the Ember Heart, first of the flamebearers, protector of the North.
I broke my oath when I tried to use the flame to save your mother.
She was dying, and the flame promised me power—enough to change fate. I believed it. I was wrong.
The fire took her instead. And in that moment, it took me too.
I became something else. Something hollow.
But you… you were born after the fall, during the ash storm. Your mother named you Mara. She said it meant "bitter flame." I thought it meant hope.
I left you with the Northstar Nomads, hidden among ash and snow. I told them to never speak my name.
But the Heart, that cursed, beautiful flame—it would never let go of blood.
If you're reading this, then the Heart has awakened. And the Warden will come for you. As will others. Some to kill you. Some to use you. Few to help.
You must be more than me, Mara. You must learn what I failed to:
The fire is not yours to control. It is yours to understand.
And when the sky burns again, as it surely will—
Don't run.
Stand.
—Kael
---
Mara finished reading. Her hand trembled, but not from fear. From clarity.
All her life, she had believed her father was a monster.
But monsters don't leave letters like this.
Serai stepped forward, voice quiet. "You still have a choice, Mara. You don't have to follow the same path."
"I'm not him," Mara said. "But I am his daughter."
She closed the book. The flames receded into its spine.
Talon whistled low. "So what now? You've got fire in your blood, your father's legacy in your hands, and half the world chasing you."
Mara turned toward the Vault's exit. The sky beyond burned red with distant storms.
"Now," she said, "we find the ones who still believe in fire—and we stop the ones who want to use it."
Serai nodded. "Then it's time we return to the Ember Circle. There's one last truth they've been hiding."
Talon grinned. "More secrets. Wonderful."
They stepped out of the Vault as the winds howled above them, carrying whispers of things that stirred in the north—where old gods slept beneath mountains of ash.
Mara didn't look back.
The flame no longer frightened her.
It was part of her.
And it was just beginning to speak.
---