The storm hissed low across the basin floor, tendrils of raw mana flickering in the air like phantom flame.

  Pag’s heart thudded in his ears, low and steady. His pulse matched the ember’s slow beat in his chest—simmering, restrained.

  Across the clearing, the Lunar Empire scouts moved in tight formation—eight soldiers in crescent-emblazoned dusk-plate, surrounding a mage whose robes seemed stitched from ash and shadow.

  Pag watched, memorizing spacing, tempo, breath. Their formation was tight, but predictable. They didn’t know death was about to descend.

  He raised two fingers.

  Now.

  Ellen was first—silent and swift, a blade drawn across the nearest soldier’s throat before his body even registered the kill. She caught him, laid him down in silence.

  Faelan struck next—two arrows loosed in quick succession, one piercing the visor of a soldier mid-turn, the second slamming into the leg joint of another, dropping him before he could shout.

  Pag surged forward, feet light on stone, flame ready but dormant.

  He ducked under a soldier’s blade and drove his dagger up between the ribs, twisting hard. Armor hissed and cracked under the sudden burst of heat he pushed into the kill.

  Borin roared into the fray like a thrown boulder, maul spinning with a wide, bone-snapping arc that caved in a scout’s helm and sent two others scrambling backward.

  Then—

  The Empire mage reacted.

  He raised his staff high, casting wide with both hands.

  "Riven, threst—!"

  Pag recognized the chant—binding hex.

  "Scatter!" he barked.

  Too late.

  A shockwave of sickly green force rippled outward, slamming into them like a wall of glass. Pag hit the ground hard, breath torn from his chest, ears ringing.

  He rolled to his knees just in time to see the mage preparing a follow-up—

  A binding spear of congealed light arced toward Ellen.

  Pag moved without thought.

  He reached.

  Not full fire. Just a spark.

  He caught the bolt mid-flight with an outstretched palm—and shattered it with a focused burst of ember-wrought heat.

  The backlash scorched the ground and split the night with a crack of thunder.

  The mage staggered back, blinking in disbelief.

  Pag pushed forward, closing the distance.

  The ember flickered under his skin, not raging this time—but flowing, precise.

  He weaved under the mage’s desperate counterstrike and drove his dagger into the soft spot beneath the arm, channeling a focused pulse of heat through the steel.

  The mage screamed.

  And then fell.

  Silence returned in a rush.

  Eight Empire scouts.

  One mage.

  All down.

  Pag stood in the stillness, breath heavy, his body trembling with the echo of restrained power.

  Ellen wiped blood from her cheek, eyes sharp. "That was too close."

  Faelan retrieved his arrows silently, nodding.

  Borin spat in the dirt. "Mages always complicate things."

  Pag turned his head slightly.

  And froze.

  In the center of the basin, the earth was cracking.

  Fine lines spiderwebbed outward from where the mage had fallen, glowing faintly with ember-orange light.

  No one spoke.

  No one moved.

  The cracks deepened, pulsing slowly—like the heartbeat of something buried far below.

  Pag felt the ember inside him stir violently, like a wolf scenting its rival.

  "...We need to move," he said. "Now."

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Ellen had already turned to run.

  Behind them, the ground collapsed inward, a plume of ash and smoke rising into the air.

  From deep beneath the earth, something ancient exhaled.

  Something that remembered fire.

  Something that remembered Emberkin blood.

  They ran without speaking.

  Behind them, the earth wheezed smoke and memory. The basin they’d fought in collapsed into a spiraling sinkhole, pulsing with red-gold veins of molten ember and fractured mana. The storm above thickened, drawn to the sudden imbalance—lightning lancing silently across a colorless sky.

  Pag ran at the front, guided not by map or memory, but by the ember inside him.

  It tugged like a compass wound tight to a buried truth.

  The path sloped sharply upward, through jagged rock and fractured stairs half-swallowed by the mountainside.

  And then—

  They saw it.

  The ruins of Cael’Brith.

  Once a temple. Now a wound.

  The outer walls were half-collapsed, black stone jutting like broken ribs. Towers leaned like drunks. Glyphs long-dead shimmered faintly in the shifting light, warning none who remained to read them.

  In the center, framed by crumbling archways and scorched vines, a gate yawned open—wide, waiting.

  They didn’t hesitate.

  Inside the first antechamber, silence pressed thick around them. Statues lined the inner walls—warped things, their faces smooth and featureless, their hands upturned like supplicants mid-prayer.

  Faelan checked the rear entrance and shook his head. "Whatever we stirred… it's not following."

  "It doesn’t need to," Pag said softly, eyes fixed on the air itself.

  Because the air breathed.

  Each breath drew flickers of heat across the stone. Each exhale sent tiny cinders curling upward like prayers gone unanswered.

  Pag’s ember trembled, not in fear—but in recognition.

  "I don’t think we’re alone," Ellen muttered.

  "No," Pag whispered. "We’re not."

  He stepped forward.

  And the chamber responded.

  The flames in the broken sconces flared to life without spark.

  And from beyond the archway, something moved.

  It stepped into view slowly—soundless, radiant, terrible.

  Seven feet tall, its limbs cloaked in layered ash, its body rippling with heat-haze and flickering embers. It had no eyes—only burning hollows where a face might’ve been. Curved horns swept back from a molten skull, and the lower half of its form flickered between legs and a flowing pillar of ash-smoke.

  It wore fragments of armor fused with its form: remnants of a priest’s mantle, shattered relics of the temple itself.

  But its presence—

  Its presence sang.

  Pag fell to one knee without meaning to, a splitting pressure behind his eyes. The ember inside him shrieked in resonance—painful, reverent.

  >Entity Identified: FIRST GUARDIAN OF THE EMBERBORN SEAL Classification: Paracelestial Construct Designation: VOR’NAZH, Flamebound Witness<

  The being spoke—not in words, but in layered impressions that thundered across Pag’s mind:

  YOU WHO BEAR THE SEAR OF OLD FIRE.

  YOU WHO WALK AS ASH AND BLADE.

  YOU HAVE AWAKENED WHAT WAS SLEEPING.

  Pag clutched his chest, teeth gritted. "We’re not here to desecrate—"

  YOU ARE HERE TO CHOOSE.

  TO CLAIM. TO FALL. TO RISE.

  The guardian raised one hand. Fire licked across its palm, solidifying into a massive, spiraled blade of obsidian wrapped in ember-light.

  Pag stumbled upright.

  Ellen grabbed his arm. "Pag. What the hell is that thing?"

  "A test," he whispered.

  Vor’Nazh pointed the blade at him.

  PROVE THE BLOOD IS WORTHY. OR BE UNMADE.

  Then it attacked.

  Trial by Flame

  The guardian moved with divine precision.

  It struck like a thunderclap—Pag blocked barely in time, sparks exploding from the impact. Heat scorched his arms, burning through the outer layers of his armor like paper.

  Borin barreled forward with a roar, hammer raised—but the guardian swept a flame-bound arm sideways, catching him in mid-stride and hurling him across the chamber.

  Faelan loosed two arrows—both melted mid-air.

  Ellen darted in, blades flashing, but the fire twisted around the guardian like armor—forcing her to backflip away or be incinerated.

  "Pag!" she shouted. "We can’t touch this thing!"

  "I can!" he shouted back, chest heaving.

  The ember inside him thrashed like a caged dragon.

  But this time, he didn’t unleash it.

  He listened.

  Pag stepped forward, lifting one hand—flame igniting across his skin in symmetrical runes he hadn’t cast.

  He met Vor’Nazh blow for blow.

  Each strike shattered stone and sent shockwaves through the temple, but Pag held.

  He wasn’t trying to kill the guardian.

  He was trying to match it.

  To answer its rhythm.

  To show the flame—not rage.

  But will.

  Vor’Nazh lunged with a final, brutal sweep meant to cleave him in half.

  Pag dropped his dagger.

  Let the ember flare along his spine.

  And caught the blade in both burning hands.

  Flames surged.

  His skin split.

  But he held.

  The guardian halted.

  For a breathless moment, nothing moved.

  Then Vor’Nazh tilted its horned head slightly.

  WORTHY.

  PASS.

  It vanished in a pillar of rising ash.

  Pag dropped to his knees, smoking, barely conscious—but smiling.

  Behind him, the temple gates groaned—and opened.

  Revealing a spiral staircase descending into red-lit depths.

  Toward the Emberborn Seal.

  And whatever it had been dreaming of all these years.

  The stairs spiraled downward like the inside of a stone throat — narrow, close, lined with scorched runes and flickering torch sconces that lit themselves as Pag passed.

  The deeper they went, the warmer it grew. Not just from natural heat — but from power.

  Old. Thick. Watching.

  Pag moved carefully, the others close behind.

  Faelan scanned every shadow with an arrow nocked.

  Ellen walked just behind Pag, both daggers out, eyes narrowed.

  Borin was last, his maul slung and ready.

  The tension between them buzzed louder than the air.

  Every step forward tasted like copper and memory.

  The Seal’s Threshold

  They emerged into a vast underground hall, easily the size of a castle’s keep, but broken and half-collapsed from ancient pressure. Stone pillars leaned precariously, and sections of the floor had fallen away into unknown depths.

  In the center of the space, surrounded by broken altar rings, stood a monolith.

  Twisted black iron. Veined with molten gold.

  Its surface rippled faintly like something breathing beneath it.

  >Object Identified: EMBERBORN SEAL<

  >Containment Artifact. Warning: Disturbance Detected.<

  Pag stepped forward slowly, the ember inside him growing hotter, sharper, hungrier.

  Ellen put a hand on his shoulder. “This… this thing feels alive.”

  “It remembers you,” Faelan added, his voice low. “Or something inside it does.”

  Pag reached toward the seal—

  —and the ground shook.

  A high, keening whistle echoed through the cavern.

  Not natural. Not magical.

  A signal.

  Then came the answering sound — heavy boots.

  Torchlight.

  Voices in a language sharpened by command.

  >Enemy Presence Confirmed: LUNAR EMPIRE SPECIAL UNIT – OBSIDIAN RECLAIMERS<

  >Classified: Elite Artifact Retrieval and Termination Operatives<

  Pag cursed and pulled back behind the nearest half-fallen pillar.

  The others followed, silent, tense.

  Across the broken chamber, twelve soldiers emerged from a fissure tunnel on the far side — armed with silver-forged blades, obsidian armor inlaid with moon-sigils, and enchanted visors that scanned the air for fluctuations.

  But worse was the figure that followed.

  Tall. Robed. Cloaked in translucent, shifting light.

  A Moonbinder.

  An elite imperial soul-weaver — specialists in controlling forbidden relics, and suppressing aberrants.

  Her voice was soft, but it carried.

  “Spread. Locate the Emberborn Source. Eliminate resistance. No witnesses.”

  The soldiers moved with brutal efficiency, scanning every inch of the chamber.

  Pag ducked lower. The ember inside him flared, responding to the Moonbinder’s presence like oil near open flame.

  “I can take the mage,” Borin whispered. “Split their formation.”

  “We won’t survive if we scatter,” Faelan muttered. “We pick a choke point and hit fast.”

  “They’re after the seal,” Pag said. “They won’t back down.”

  He looked to Ellen.

  “We can’t let them reach it.”

  She nodded grimly.

  “Then we do what we do best,” she said.

  Pag turned his eyes to the monolith.

  It pulsed once — slowly — in time with his heartbeat.

  Then he turned toward the Empire.

  “Time to light it up.”