The night before the vow, the sky bled red over Blackmoor.
Thunder rolled across the low hills, echoing like war drums, and the alley fires of the undercity burned unusually bright—as if the world itself sensed what was coming.
*The Cinderborn* had arrived.
---
🔥 *The Wound That Walks*
His name was *Ashen Veyr*—a scarred, silent boy no older than twenty, wrapped in smoke-stained rags and wielding a broken glaive he refused to relinquish.
Ruby watched from the rafters of the Ember Hall as Thorne questioned him.
"Why come to us?"
Ashen's voice was low, more growl than whisper.
"Because your flame burns louder than theirs."
He removed his tunic without warning, revealing a back crisscrossed with *sigils branded into the flesh*, remnants of Church experiments. Some pulsed faintly in the dark.
Kaela flinched.
"Those are pain seals... But they're not inert."
"They used me to test pain thresholds," Ashen said. "Until I started surviving them."
He wasn't just another orphan. He was *living evidence* of the Church's secret war.
Thorne nodded.
"Then stand. Kneel before the flame."
---
🩸 *The Pact Sealed in Blood*
That night, the Syndicate circled around a shallow brazier filled with coals. Ashen knelt, arms bare, as Ruby approached with a ritual dagger.
"Do you swear loyalty to the flame that will unmake this world?"
"I swear to the ash it leaves behind."
Ruby sliced a clean line across his palm. Thorne held out his own hand, letting their blood mix and drip into the fire.
"Then rise, Ashen Veyr. Cinderborn of Emberwake."
And the flame hissed.
---
đź©ş *A Fire Inside*
Elsewhere, Ruby still nursed the wound from the recent ambush. What should've been a simple gash had begun to... pulse.
At night, she heard voices. Dreams she didn't recognize—*a memory that wasn't hers*. The attacker had slashed her with something poisoned not by alchemy, but *by ritual*.
Lysena examined her under moonlight.
"Something latched onto you," she whispered. "A spell, maybe. Or a curse."
Ruby smiled bitterly.
"Good. Let it. Maybe I'll learn to burn brighter."
---
⚰️ *A Public Message*
Three days later, the Church staged a *public execution* in Velmire Square. Two men and a young girl—accused of conspiracy with the Ember Syndicate.
The priests chanted. The crowd watched. And the fire consumed them.
Thorne stood on a rooftop above the square, hood drawn.
He didn't blink.
"They want a war," he murmured to himself. "Then we'll give them one they'll pray to choke on."
Ashen appeared beside him, silent as smoke.
"Let me be first."
---
⚔️ *A Vow Fulfilled in Blood*
That night, a group of priests traveling back from the execution disappeared along the stone bridge outside the capital.
In their place: a trail of scorched sigils and a message carved into the stone parapet.
*"The ash remembers. And it is coming."*
— *Cinderborn*
---
🕯️ *The Oath in the Chamber*
Thorne gathered the core members of the Syndicate: Ruby, Lysena, Kaela, Rikkan, and now Ashen.
They stood before the flame again, this time not for a ritual—but for a vow.
"No more silence," Thorne said. "We have moved in shadow long enough."
"The world must choose: kneel, or burn."
Each placed a hand over the flame. It did not hurt them. But it marked them.
A black brand formed at the center of each palm: *the Eye of Ember.*
The Syndicate was no longer content to survive.
Now, they would *reign.*
---
*End of Chapter 12*