POV: High Inquisitor Mereth, Obsidian Order
The chamber was carved from obsidian and bone.
Seven thrones surrounded the pit of embers that glowed in the center of the chamber. Shadows moved on the walls like living things. The air stank of incense and old blood.
High Inquisitor Mereth stood in the center, draped in midnight robes, face hidden behind a lacquered mask of silver and jet. Her voice was smooth, cold as a dagger's kiss.
"Kael has returned."
Murmurs rippled through the gathered masters. Some shifted in discomfort. Others leaned forward.
"We have no proof," hissed Grand Strategist Vorn. His voice rasped like sandpaper. "One symbol in the dirt doesn't mean the Phoenix walks again."
Mereth turned her gaze on him. "Vaelen lives. He saw him with his own eyes."
"Then Vaelen failed."
"He was never meant to succeed," Mereth said coolly. "Only to provoke."
"Why?" asked Mistress Klyra, seated atop bones wrapped in silk. Her lips were painted the color of dried blood. "Why awaken a curse we already killed?"
Mereth smiled beneath her mask.
"Because Kael's power is incomplete. He remembers only pain. Not purpose. He's broken—and predictable. He will seek the Tower of Dust. The priest. The past."
"You want him to remember?"
Mereth's fingers flexed. Smoke curled around her knuckles. "I want him to remember the wrong things. I want him to chase ghosts until he opens the gate himself."
Silence fell.
Then a deeper voice echoed from the farthest throne.
One shrouded in a veil of shadow so thick, it swallowed light.
"And if he unites the Sealed Flames?" The voice was not human. Not anymore.
Mereth bowed her head slightly.
"Then we begin the Second Burning. And this time, we end it properly."
The voice said nothing else.
But something shifted. Something moved in the dark. A shape. A presence.
The other councilors lowered their heads.
Mereth raised her hand—and from the center of the ember pit, a figure emerged.
Cloaked in chains. Masked in iron. Eyes sewn shut with black thread.
A Harbinger.
An assassin-priest born of Kael's own flame, twisted and remade after his death.
"Release him," Mereth ordered. "Send him north. Let Kael see what his legacy has become."
The Harbinger bowed, chains clinking, and vanished in a flicker of shadowlight.
Mereth turned toward the council.
"He may have survived death. But everything he built now serves us."
And deep beneath the chamber, something old—something caged—laughed.