---
**Chapter Five: Echoes Through Flame**
The gate closed behind me with the hush of falling ash.
It didn't slam. It didn't vanish. It simply wasn't there anymore.
I stood in a vast chamber that felt as much alive as it was ancient. The walls pulsed faintly, veined with molten light, like the heartbeat of the world had been buried here. The air shimmered—dense with heat and secrets.
Before me, a bridge of black stone stretched across a chasm. Lava rolled far below, slow and silent. Not angry. Just… waiting.
I tightened my grip on the storybook in my pack and stepped forward.
As I crossed, voices rose from the chasm—dozens, maybe hundreds, overlapping and layered, whispering names, half-sung lullabies, and warnings I couldn't understand. Some sounded like Maama. One like my own voice, older. That scared me most.
At the end of the bridge stood a tall archway, and beyond it—light. Not sunlight, but firelight.
A city. Or what was left of one.
Carved into the rock itself, towers rose like jagged roots. Flames drifted through the air like dandelion seeds. And in the center stood a monument: a broken blade jutting from the earth, wrapped in chains of gold.
It tugged at something inside me.
"You feel it," said the Watcher, who had somehow followed without sound. "This place was once the heart of the Flameborn."
"What happened to it?" I asked, my voice smaller than I expected.
He didn't answer. Just walked toward the monument.
I followed, not because I trusted him—but because I had to know. About this city. About myself.
We stopped at the blade. It wasn't just metal. Symbols burned faintly across its surface—the same ones I'd seen in Maama's book and on the stone wall. The same one now burned into my chest.
"She wielded this," the Watcher said. "Your mother."
My knees buckled.
"She fought to keep you hidden," he went on. "Burned half of Isoba to the ground doing it. And in the end, she sealed the blade to keep it from your father."
I looked up. "She fought *him*?"
He nodded. "He wasn't always what he is now. But grief turns even fire to ice."
A pulse ran through the sword, up into the chains. And without warning, they cracked—one by one.
I stumbled back.
"You've awakened the bond," the Watcher said softly. "There's no turning back."
I stared at the blade, heat crawling up my spine.
Somewhere deep in the distance, something roared.
Not beast. Not man. Something in between.
The Watcher turned toward the sound. "We have to move. Others are coming now. Those who want the blade… and you."
I reached toward the hilt. My hand hovered. The heat was unbearable. But the sword didn't burn me.
It felt like coming home.
---