But the earth does not return what it was freely given.
He collapsed beside his heart, his limbs crumbling like ancient cliffs.
His body broke into six—six shards scattered, all reaching toward each other, and toward the heart they now protect.
And deep in the eldest range, his heart still waits—forever beating, sealed beneath the mountain, guarded by the blood of stone and earth’s black memory. The cliffs still echo with his name.
A warning and a promise:
Immortality always comes with a cost.
“Sarn,”Noa mutters. “Sounds like a tragic idiot.”
I glance at him. “You don’t think it’s real?”
“I think it’s a metaphor disguised as warning. You want to become unbreakable? Immortal? Fine. But you’re not coming back as you once were.” Before I can answer, Noa leans casually against the armrest, one hand absentmindedly stroking my back. “I found another one,” he says. “‘The Flame That Devoured a Crown.’”
I look up as he begins reading:
Virelda,the flame-born princess, was bornnot to rule—but to burn. The Heart of Fire sang to her, its call rising in her blood as her elemental power grew beyond all bounds.
When her form became flame, neither wall nor will could contain her, and her people despaired, then conspired. It is said that they lured her through an old stone tunnel beneath the southern mountain, where earth meets sea and fire breathes from the deep. There, beneath the peak that never sleeps, she found the origin of fire itself—an eternal flame that held her close. Because flame remembers its own. And what it claims, it claims forever. When she discovered her people’s treachery, she devoured them, until nothing remained in the cavern and tunnel but blood and ash.
She stands within the heart’s flame still, bound and burning, her hunger and vengeance endless. And it is told: should the eternal flame ever call to another, they too must face her fire—or be forever lost to it.
The fire hissessoftly as if listening, smoke curling toward the ceiling.
“Hm.” He frowns, thumbing through the next page. “This one’s… torn.” He angles the book toward the firelight. The parchment edge is streaked, not simply ripped, as if something tried to drown the words it carried. Ink has bled in strange constellations—half remembered, half erased.
He reads slowly, his voice low. “When the heavens ruled from above and the elements from below… something ancient returned to the world. And where the stars fell, a child was found.”
A chill moves through me.
He pauses, searching. “Starlight lived within her eyes, and from her hands, magick flowed in endless?—”
His voice falters as he scans for what remains.
“… an impossible choice.”
Then he turns the page gently—and the rest is gone. Just more water-stained pages.
He studies the top margin, jaw tightening. “The title isn’t fully legible. Just ‘ST—’ and then it’s missing.”
The ink bleeds outward, as though the word itself tried to escape the page.
The air in the room seems to thin.
Only one faint line of the myth remains, pressed into the bottom margin like an afterthought. The words shimmer when the firelight hits them as he reads it aloud.
“The world saved by what it could not keep.”
For a moment, neither of us move.
It feels less like a myth and more like a warning.
Noa exhales. “Someone ripped this out on purpose,” he murmurs. “You can see the tear—too clean to be an accident.”
My pulse stirs, uneasy. “Why?”
