“You’re a little too calm about that,” he said
She gave a tight shrug. “I’ve read too much to be surprised anymore. Besides, some of them only wake when they’re called.”
Gideon grunted. “Let’s not call them then.”
Alaric, who had been quiet for too long, finally spoke. “What do you remember about the fire goddess, Wyn?”
I raised an eyebrow, surprised. “From the old texts?”
He nodded.
I slowed slightly, reaching back into memory, not only from the palace archives, but from the forbidden corners. The footnotes. The half-torn pages I wasn’t supposed to read.
“Vireya wasn’t born a god of destruction. That came later. She was once the Flame of Becoming, fire as transformation, not ruin. Her light comforted others, not consumed them.”
Jasira traced a scorch mark near the base of the mural. “Then what happened?”
“They started worshipping the wrong part of her,” I said. “The fire, not the warmth. The power, not the purpose. They stopped asking what she wanted and started deciding what she meant.”
Gideon’s brow drew together in a troubled line. “That’s a dangerous devotion.”
“Fanaticism always is,” I murmured.
Erindor’s voice was quiet, but sharp like a flint. “This wasn’t worship. It was control. Fire was a leash. A measure. You didn’t pass their trials by praying. You passed by surviving.”
We all turned to him.
He wasn’t looking at us. He fixed his eyes on the soot-dark ring scorched into the stone floor.
“I’ve seen marks like that before,” he continued, voice flat. “Carved beneath a temple where screams echoed for days. They burned offerings at first. Then the sinners. Then, anyone who hesitated.”
Jasira swallowed. “That’s not devotion. That’s cruelty dressed as faith.”
I nodded. “It always starts with light. But it’s so easy to lose the warmth and keep the flame.”
“That’s madness,” Alaric said.
He nodded. “There are cults that survived after the gods fell. The cult remains hidden and scattered across Aetherra.”
“Do they still exist?” Jasira asked.
He glanced toward the darkness behind us. “I think nothing ever truly dies. Especially not belief.”
Opening wider now, the tunnel saw the heat fade slowly, like breath exhaled for the last time. The air cooled enough for oursteps to echo again. The shrine was behind us. But it didn’t feel like it had let us go.
I wrapped my arms around myself as we moved. My skin still buzzed from the mark on my arm. I wasn’t burning, but pulsing heartbeat.
We paused to rest where the path bent near a small ledge that overlooked the winding trail ahead. The view was bleak, harsh, and gray, craggy peaks veiled in fog and veins of steam still curling from the valley below.
Bran flopped beside Jasira, who poured a bit of water into her cupped hands for him to drink. Gideon unwrapped something that might’ve once been bread and offered it to no one in particular. Alaric paced near the ledge, arms crossed, his eyebrow puckered in concentration.
I sat a little apart, letting the cool breeze brush my flushed cheeks.
Erindor settled beside me without a word.
We didn’t speak for a long while.
Then, softly, he asked, “Do you believe in them?”
