Chapter 5: Echoes of Ash
The war hall was dimly lit, firelight flickering across polished stone. Thalen stood alone now. His companions had been dismissed, their debrief complete. Only Ragan remained, arms crossed behind his back, his eyes fixed on the relic shard Aven had retrieved.
"You said it wasn’t born of aura," Ragan muttered, turning the shard over in gloved hands. "That’s impossible. All things that carry power are tethered to an aura root."
"It was humming," Thalen said, voice quiet. "But it didn’t pulse like an aura. It felt... forced. Like it was stitched together."
Ragan’s brow furrowed. "Artificial aura synthesis has been forbidden for centuries. Only one house ever dabbled in it before being wiped out."
Thalen waited.
"The House of Veyl," Ragan continued. "They believed aura could be manufactured and implanted. It always failed. Until now".
The Waking Flame
That night, Thalen couldn’t sleep.
He lay in the training barracks, eyes open to the timber ceiling, blade resting beneath his cot. The Ember aura curled faintly around his fingers still unstable. Sometimes it flared when he dreamed.
His thoughts wandered to the creature in the well. The warped flesh. The black aura. The fear in the child’s eyes.
It hadn’t just been corruption.