Chapter 4 Sparks in the Ash
Lyra didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious seconds, minutes, hours.
Only that she woke to heat.
Not the suffocating, drowning fire from before, but a gentler warmth, like coals hidden under ashes. She blinked, vision swimming, until the cavern ceiling sharpened into focus. Ember crystals flickered overhead, their light dimmer now, as if drained.
Someone was murmuring her name.
“Lyra. Hey come back.”
Kael’s voice. Rough, low, threaded with an urgency she wasn’t used to hearing from him.
She forced her head up. Pain webbed across her temples, but she managed to sit. Elder Orin knelt beside her, staff grounded in the stone floor. The old man’s eyes glimmered with something between caution and awe.
“You survived the first ignition,” he said softly. “Few do on their first attempt.”
Lyra swallowed past the dryness in her throat. “That… didn’t feel like surviving.”
“You opened the First Vein Gate,” Orin continued. “Not fully but enough for the dragonfire to respond.”
Kael crouched beside her, dark hair falling into his eyes. “That scream nearly cracked the walls. I thought you were”
He cut himself off, jaw clenching.
Lyra blinked. “Dead?”
“I was going to say ‘unstable,’” he muttered, “but sure. Let’s go with dead.”
She tried to laugh; it came out as a thin breath.
The truth was harder.
When the flame had burst free inside her, it wasn’t pain she had feared it was loss.
Loss of control.
Loss of herself.
The dragonfire hadn’t felt separate. It had felt like a buried memory rising ancient anger, grief, echoing through her bones.
“Lyra,” Orin said, drawing her attention back. “What you saw… what you heard inside the flame describe it.”
She hesitated.
Images flashed behind her eyes:
A sky torn open by fire.
A colossal shadow falling.
A voice roaring her name no, not her name, something older.
Sorrow so deep it thickened the air.
But she wasn’t ready to speak it into the world.
“I saw… someone,” she said carefully. “A dragon, I think.”
Kael exchanged a look with Orin. “You think? Most people know if they saw a dragon, Lyra.”
She glared weakly at him. “Well, forgive me for nearly combusting.”
Orin tapped his staff gently against the ground, the sound echoing like a heartbeat.
“What you encountered is the Inherent Memory of the dragon whose flame you carry. A fragment of its final moments, etched into the cultivation you now embody.”
Lyra stilled. “So the dragon… died?”
“That is the assumption,” Orin said. “Given how long dragonfire has been absent from this world.”
Kael leaned back against a broken pillar. “And given how the Ascendant Order harvested the last of them for energy. They burned dragons to power their cities.”
Lyra grimaced. “I guessed as much.”
“And now you understand why they want you so badly,” Orin said. “Not for who you are but what burns inside you.”
A chill slid down her spine despite the heat lingering under her skin.
She pushed herself to her feet, wobbling. Kael reached out by reflex, steadying her. She didn’t pull away.
“Take it slow,” he said quietly.
“I don’t have time to take it slow.” Her voice surprised even her sharper, more determined. “If they’re hunting me, I need to learn to control this.”
Orin nodded. “Then we resume your training. But not tonight. Opening the First Gate drains the spirit and scorches the inner channels. Rest. Tomorrow, we attempt shaping.”
Kael groaned. “Already? Let her breathe.”
“There is no time,” Orin said simply. “The Order has eyes in every district. Their Seeker Units will track the energy burst from her awakening within hours.”
Lyra stiffened. “They can sense that?”
“Dragonflame is not subtle,” Orin replied. “They will come.”
Kael rose as well, expression turning hard. “Then we move now.”
Lyra frowned. “Move where? This hideout?”
Kael shook his head. “The Hollow Warrens. Easier to disappear. And harder for Seeker tech to scan.”
Orin’s staff glowed faintly. “Take her. I will delay them as long as I can.”
Lyra opened her mouth to protest she hated the idea of him facing danger because of her but he waved her off.
“Do not waste my time with arguments,” the elder said. “Your survival matters more than my safety.”
Kael picked up his satchel, securing it over his shoulder. “Come on. Before this place becomes a warzone.”
Lyra followed him toward the narrow exit tunnel, each step echoing.
But halfway through the corridor, something made her pause.
A soft pulse.
A tug.
Inside her chest like a heartbeat that wasn’t hers.
She pressed her palm to her sternum.
“Lyra?” Kael asked, turning back.
She hesitated. “I… think the flame is awake.”
His eyebrow rose. “Define ‘awake.’”
She closed her eyes. Inside her, the golden fire curled like a sleeping creature shifting in its nest. Not violent this time just watchful. Listening.
“It feels… aware,” she said quietly.
Kael didn’t laugh. He didn’t mock her. Instead, he stepped closer, expression unreadable.
“Then we move faster,” he murmured. “Because once the Order learns you’ve bonded with the flame, they’ll double their forces.”
They emerged into the night.
Erevale stretched around them metal towers stabbed into a sky veiled by smoke, neon signs flickering against darkness. Bridges latticed the air like glowing ribs. Hover trams hummed along rails suspended above the streets. And beneath it all, the city pulsed with a smoggy, restless heartbeat.
Lyra inhaled.
Even from here, she could taste the artificial ether the Order pumped through the districts a deadened, metallic magic that always made her stomach twist.
Kael led her along a series of narrow walkways, keeping to shadows and maintenance tunnels. He moved like he’d been born in this city’s ribs, gliding through hidden paths the way others breathed.
They reached a rusted service elevator tucked behind an abandoned refinery. Kael pried open the gate and gestured for her to enter.
“Down we go.”
The elevator groaned as it descended into darkness past the glittering city lights, past the sump levels, past the forgotten train lines.
The air grew colder, heavier.
When the gate slid open, Lyra stepped into a world beneath the world.
The Hollow Warrens.
Tunnels carved from stone and twisted metal. Flickering lanterns. The hum of ley rivers flowing underneath cracked floors. Refugees, mages, outcasts people who lived between the Order’s blind spots.
Lyra’s heart tightened.
“This is…” She exhaled. “It’s alive.”
Kael smirked. “Yeah. Don’t spread that around. People down here like being ignored.”
He guided her deeper into the Warrens, where the stone walls warmed with faint red veins.
“Fire veins,” Kael said, noticing where she looked. “The Warrens are built over ancient ley fractures. They’ll help hide your energy signature.”
They stopped outside a small chamber carved into the wall. A curtain of woven metallic threads guarded the entrance.
“This will be your room,” Kael said. “Safe enough. For now.”
Lyra stepped inside. It was small just a cot, a basin, and a cracked mirror but it was hers.
For the first time since her awakening, she let herself breathe.
Kael lingered at the door. “You did good today.”
Lyra laughed softly. “I screamed myself unconscious.”
“And still opened a Vein Gate,” he countered. “Most cultivators spend years trying. You did it in one night.”
She didn’t answer. Her gaze drifted to her hands hands that still glowed faintly, as if embers clung beneath the skin.
“Kael,” she said quietly. “What if I can’t control it?”
He leaned against the doorframe, expression steady.
“Then I’ll help you.”
It was simple. And somehow, that steadiness eased something inside her.
“Rest,” he added. “Tomorrow… everything changes.”
He slipped away.
Lyra sat on the cot, letting the silence settle.
Only then did she hear it again soft, distant, pulsing.
A voice.
Curling through her mind like smoke.
Child of my fire…
She froze, breath caught in her throat.
The dragon’s memory wasn’t asleep after all.
It was speaking to her.
And it was waking up.
