Chapter 3: Ash in the Garden
The soulflame garden behind Vyreflare Academy wasn't meant for cultivation.
It was a place where the burn was low, the pressure light, and nothing asked you to prove your worth.
The trees here whispered in ember-leaf tones. Stone benches sat shaded beneath sunsteel pergolas. Flame orchids bloomed in quiet spirals of red and gold. Students rarely came. Not because they couldn't—but because too many still believed fire should roar.
Damian Cromwell preferred it like this.
He didn't come here to think. He came here because he didn't want to think in public.
Today, though, public followed him.
"You're hiding."
The voice came from behind a veil of smoke and sarcasm.
Aeyra Varnhilde, robes loose at the collar, sat down beside him on the bench like it had always been hers.
Damian didn't look over.
"This isn't hiding. It's called selective social evaporation."
"So… hiding with vocabulary."
"What do you want, Aeyra?"
"Company. A witness. Maybe a confession. Haven't decided."
He let the silence hang.
A butterfly made of flickering petals landed near his foot.
"You always this quiet, or just with people who flirt like they're testing a knife?"
"That depends," Damian said, "on whether the knife is ceremonial."
"You think I'm ornamental?"
"I think you're trying too hard."
She laughed—not high-pitched, not forced. Just… amused.
"Finally. An honest insult. I feel spoiled."
They sat in comfortable tension for a while.
Not lovers. Not strangers. Not yet enemies. Something between friction and rhythm.
"I saw you in my last thread," Aeyra said, quieter now. "In the convergence vision."
"And?"
"You were standing still. Everyone else was fighting. You weren't."
"That sounds like me."
"No, it doesn't," she said. "Because the version of you in the vision?
He was smiling."
Damian didn't answer.
She didn't push.
Up on the eastern tower, Instructor Rhess adjusted the focus crystal embedded in her scrying rig.
"Still not kissing," she muttered.
Beside her, Flamekeeper Irios raised an eyebrow.
"You were expecting…?"
"I was hoping for either open defiance or unresolved longing. Right now, they're trapped in 'almost clever.' It's exhausting."
"They're teenagers with world-breaking spirits."
"Exactly. That should at least be entertaining."
Aeyra finally broke the silence again.
"Why do you hold your flame so tightly?"
"Because it doesn't belong to me."
"What does that mean?"
Damian stood, slowly.
"It means if I ever lose control… it won't look like fire."
"What will it look like?"
He looked up at the petals falling from the soulflame tree above.
"Grief."
Later that night, in his spirit chamber, Veyzara watched from the shadows of ash and ember.
"She sees you."
"She sees who I pretend to be."
"And still chose to sit beside it. That matters more than you admit."
"She's dangerous."
"So are you. Maybe that's why you haven't burned each other yet."
At the far end of Vyreflare's political wing, Sister Eralyne stood in front of a projection circle with six pulsing spirit orbs arranged in a spiral.
Each represented a newly awakened convergence soul.
Three had already flared.
One—Damian's—glowed in quiet defiance.
The others pulsed like sleeping weapons.
"Three flames are watching," she murmured.
"Three more will rise.
And only one is smiling."