The path twisted upward into the thinning mist, where the air grew sharp and biting with old magic. Trees stood like silent watchers, their bark cracked with frost and time. Ahead, carved into the mountainside, loomed the sealed gate tall, ancient, and weathered by ages long past.
Elanora and Ash slowed as they approached it, footsteps muffled by the soft earth beneath them.
The door was massive a stone arch framed with chiseled runes, swirling with unfamiliar symbols. Though it had no lock or handle, a faint hum resonated from it, like a heartbeat buried beneath stone.
Then the pendant at Elanora's throat began to glow.
She inhaled sharply. "Ash…"
The pendant pulsed erratically, casting flickers of golden light across the gate. In answer, the symbols along the arch lit up, one by one, as though they were awakening from centuries of sleep.
Ash stepped forward slowly, his hand instinctively going to his blade but he didn't draw it.
Ash (softly): "It's reacting to you. Not your power… your memory."
Elanora took a trembling step closer. Her eyes locked onto the runes. As she stared, the glowing marks shifted, reshaping themselves not through any physical movement, but as if her gaze was unlocking something buried in them.
The mountain seemed to breathe with her.
Elanora (quietly): "I've seen these before. In the trial… in the flame…"
The wind whispered low between the rocks, and the temperature dropped as shadows curled at the edges of the gate. One of the runes flared brighter than the rest, a silver-white glint that pulled her closer.
Ash watched her carefully. "Don't touch it yet. Let it come to you."
She nodded, sweat beading on her brow despite the cold. The glow of the pendant bled into the symbols and for a moment, the light caught within Elanora's eyes, casting an otherworldly reflection.
Then she stepped closer and the stone shuddered.
A symbol directly at eye level flared so bright it seared into her vision. Her breath hitched, knees buckling slightly as something surged through her chest not pain, but recognition.
Elanora (whispers): "I remember this place…"
Flash of a Forgotten Life:
For a heartbeat, the world vanished around her replaced by firelight and shattered skies. She stood on this very path, long ago, cloaked in armor and ash, a burning sword in her hand.
Beside her a man with Ash's eyes, though his face was different. Older. Hardened.
"You must seal it, Elanora," the vision-man said."Even if it costs us everything."
She gasped and stumbled back into the present, eyes wide, heart hammering. Ash caught her before she fell.
Ash (concerned): "What did you see?"
Elanora (trembling): "Not what. When. I think… I've been here before."
Ash (searching her face): "You think you were someone else?"
Elanora: "No. I was still me. Just… not this me."
The pendant flared again and a portion of the door cracked down the middle, revealing a spiral of light behind it.
But it didn't open fully.
Not yet.
Ash: "It knows you. This gate… it's waiting for you to remember more."
She turned her face to him eyes wide, haunted, but burning with purpose.
Elanora: "If my eyes remember the end… I have to be the one who changes it."
Ash: "Then I'll walk beside you even if it burns us both."
The fractured gate still pulsed with light and shadow. Behind it, the spiral of glowing symbols spiraled inward a path that had not been walked in centuries.
Elanora stood before the monolith, her breath coming slow and unsteady. The pendant at her neck had grown hot, pulsing like a second heartbeat. She reached for the carved symbol that had responded most violently to her gaze — the one etched deep in the shape of a flame wrapped in shadow.
Ash's voice was distant behind her.
Ash (tense): "Elanora, wait—"
But her fingertips touched the stone.
Everything shattered.
She was no longer in the forest.
The world around her bled away into flame and storm. Stone towers collapsed under the weight of sky-fire. The air burned with ash, and above it all a great gate, not unlike the one they had just seen, stood open and roaring with magic.
Elanora stood at its threshold but she was not herself.
She wore obsidian armor carved with sunfire sigils. Her hair was tied back, streaked with soot and sweat. Her hand gripped a blade burning with inner flame. And beside her
A warrior stood tall, cloaked in dark metal and worn leather.
He had Ash's eyes.
Warrior (voice trembling): "If we do this… there's no turning back."
Elanora (in vision, firm): "We already crossed the line. Now we finish it."
They moved toward the gate, but something shattered behind them. The air cracked a betrayal, sudden and vicious. Figures cloaked in silver turned on them, blades flashing in the flame.
A scream.
Ash's past-self the warrior was struck, falling to one knee.
Elanora (shouting): "No!"
She turned, fury igniting her eyes, and unleashed a wave of fire from her blade but too late. The light around the gate faded. The spell was broken.
And still, she stood there, refusing to leave.
Elanora (in vision, whispering): "I promised I'd return… even if the world forgot."
Then came the final echo not her voice, but something older. A voice layered in time, woven into the stones:
Vision Fragment (ancient and echoing):"She who remembers the fire shall reignite the oath.Only memory unlocks the flame.Only truth binds the path."
Back in the Present
Elanora gasped, her body collapsing to her knees. Ash caught her instantly, kneeling beside her in the cold grass.
Ash (urgent): "Elanora ! Are you ? What happened?"
Her eyes were still glowing faintly silver fading slowly back to green. Her voice shook as she whispered:
Elanora: "I saw it. The fall. The gate. The betrayal."
Ash gently brushed damp strands of hair from her cheek. His touch grounded her, pulled her from the edges of whatever magic had taken hold.
Ash (softly): "What did you see… about me?"
She looked at him. And though the tears in her eyes hadn't fallen yet, they clung to the edge of something deeper recognition.
Elanora (quietly): "You were there. You tried to protect me. And it cost you everything."
A long silence passed. The wind stirred the leaves, carrying with it a whisper perhaps from the gate, or from the past.
Ash (gently): "Then maybe this time… I get to save you."
Ash caught her just in time.
Elanora's knees buckled beneath her as she stumbled back from the stone, breath shallow, eyes wide. She was trembling not from fear, but something heavier. Something ancient. Something that had always lived inside her, waiting to be remembered.
He held her close, grounding her.
Ash (softly): "Elanora. Hey look at me."
She blinked, her vision swimming. Ash's face came into view. The golden light of the setting sun haloed his hair, his brows drawn with concern. His hand reached up to brush strands of hair from her face, his thumb lingering just beneath her eye.
Elanora (voice cracking): "Ash... I've been here before."
The words tasted like ash and truth on her tongue.
Ash (quiet): "What do you mean?"
She stared past him for a moment back at the stone door, now pulsing in silence. The air felt heavier. Charged. As if the world itself remembered too.
Elanora: "In the vision... I wasn't just someone else. I was me. Or... who I used to be."
She reached for her pendant. It still glowed faintly cracked open from the earlier vision, the rune inside now exposed like an open wound.
Elanora (softly): "What if I'm not just the flame's future… but its past?"
Ash said nothing at first. He looked at her as if truly seeing her not just the girl chosen by prophecy, not just the woman beside him now but the echo of someone he had once known, once stood beside in battle and blood.
Ash (whispering): "Then this mountain's been waiting for you… all this time."
Flash of the Past (Elanora's Past Life)
The memory crashed over her again not a vision this time, but a feeling. A fragment.
She stood atop the gates of a city long buried, flames consuming the sky. Her blade trembled in her hand. She had made a choice to stay behind, to guard something no one else could.
She was called Serelya then Keeper of the Flame.
And she remembered the face of the man who stood beside her, swearing he would return.
It had been Ash.
Or someone who wore his soul.
Back in the Present
Elanora's shoulders sagged beneath the weight of the truth. Ash eased her down against a moss-covered rock, crouching before her.
Ash: "Tell me what you saw."
Elanora (hoarse): "The kingdom fell. We tried to stop it. You were there, Ash. Or… a part of you was."
Ash (gently): "Then we failed."
She looked at him, eyes shimmering.
Elanora: "No. I stayed behind. I sealed the gate… so no one else would follow. I broke the oath... and waited. I think I've been waiting ever since."
A silence settled between them deep, still, reverent. The forest seemed to hold its breath. And then:
Ash (quietly, with awe): "That's why the gate knew you. Not your magic. Your memory."
Elanora: "This isn't just prophecy. It's remembrance."
Ash reached for her hand. Their fingers intertwined a bridge between past and present, between who they were and who they are becoming.
Ash: "Then let's finish what they started. Together."........