Eclipsed by Flame – Part I
The Ashen Dawn
The sky bled with smoke.
From the ridgeline above Myrrhal Crag, the land below looked like it had been clawed apart by fire itself. Where wheat once swayed in the wind, only blackened stalks remained, waving like funeral flags. Homes stood as hollowed husks, their timber skeletons still glowing with ember-light. The air shimmered with rising heat, distorting the world as if reality itself had blistered under the flame.
Elira dismounted and stepped into the ruin, boots crunching over cinders and bone fragments. A charred wind swept her cloak behind her, the scent of ash and burned flesh sharp enough to sting her throat. Vaelin knelt beside a scorched body—twisted mid-run, mouth frozen in a silent scream, arms cradling something small and utterly gone.
“Fire didn’t just burn this place,” he said, voice low and tight. “It devoured it.”
Elira moved toward the village center, following a trail of soot-blasted stones. Her eyes caught the faded outline of a sigil etched into the ground—a spiral of hooked lines within a ring of runes. Though the fire had burned hot enough to melt metal, the sigil glowed faintly, warm as skin.
She crouched beside it and pressed her palm to the earth.
It pulsed.
A flicker of heat raced up her arm—familiar, ancient, and alive.
“Vaelin,” she whispered. “This was made with intent. Not just destruction. It’s a summoning mark… and a conduit.”
Vaelin joined her, brow furrowed. “A conduit to what?”
Elira didn't answer. She wasn’t entirely sure. But a name echoed in her mind—soft as smoke, fierce as flame.
Rhaziran.
They found the survivors beneath the crumbling bell tower—fewer than a dozen, huddled together like kindling ready to be lit. Soot streaked their skin. Some had burned hands, others bleeding feet. One man cradled his own severed ear with a blank stare. When they saw Elira, they stilled.
A child pointed. “It’s her.”
Voices rose, reverent and trembling.
“The Flameheart…”
“She walks again…”
A woman dropped to her knees before Elira, reaching out with shaking fingers. “You rose from the fire. I saw you. Wings of flame... your voice in the blaze. You are her.”
Elira’s breath caught in her throat. “I’m not who you think—”
“You came to finish it, didn’t you? The Rebirth?” Her eyes glistened with tears. “Please. Make it quick.”
Vaelin’s voice cut through, sharp and calm. “Back off.” He stepped forward, hand on his blade hilt. “She’s not here for judgment.”
“She is judgment,” someone whispered.
“Enough,” Elira said. “Tell me what happened here.”
Their story came in broken pieces—armor scorched red, chants in a language older than the empire, a blaze that rained from the sky. The attackers asked for the Flameheart, showed sketches of her. And when the villagers didn’t answer fast enough, the flames came.
“They had no faces,” a boy whispered. “Just masks. Eyes like embers.”
That night, under a sky of ash and half-stars, Elira sat by the fire, flipping her silver coin absently between her fingers. Vaelin sharpened his blade, the rhythmic scrape a grounding presence beside the madness of the day.
“So.” He broke the silence. “Ever run a fire cult in your off-time?”
Elira sighed. “I’ll pretend that’s a serious question.”
He didn’t look up. “They recognized you. That drawing was you. You said yourself you don’t remember before the Silver Mages sealed your soul.”
“They were fanatics. Maybe they saw what they wanted.”
“Or maybe you were what they wanted.”
She paused, watching the fire. “You think I’m one of them?”
He met her gaze at last. “I think… whatever they see in you, it’s not the you I know. That’s enough for me.”
She gave him a small, grateful smile. “You’re a better liar than you used to be.”
“I’ve had a good teacher.”
The cultists struck just after midnight.
The first sign was the unnatural silence—no wind, no crackling fire. Just stillness. Then came the hiss.
A column of fire burst from the treeline, turning night into day. Figures walked through the blaze unharmed—robed in layered crimson and obsidian armor, masks shaped like phoenix faces, flame curling along their hands like living serpents.
“Elira of the Flame,” the leader intoned, his voice a harmonic blend of man and something deeper. He raised a burning brand above his head, fire blooming like a lotus.
“You are called. Come, or burn.”
Vaelin didn’t wait. “I’ll take ‘neither,’ thanks.”
He hurled a throwing knife at the leader’s heart—only for the air around the man to shimmer, melting the blade mid-flight. The fire-lotus flared, and cultists surged forward.
Vaelin met them head-on. His twin blades—a narrow parrying knife and a heavier crescent-edged shortblade—moved like extensions of his body. He stepped under a flaming spear, pivoted behind the wielder, and drove his blade between the ribs. The cultist ignited mid-scream, body reduced to cinders before hitting the ground.
Another lunged with a chain whip ablaze—Vaelin caught it around his bracer, yanked the cultist off balance, and kicked him into the fire. He fought like he was dancing with death, dodging arcs of flame, blades flashing in the firelight.
Elira raised her hands—and the fire paused.
She felt it—not fear, not panic. Something deeper. A rhythm pulsing under her skin, under the world. The fire listened to her. Welcomed her. Remembered her.
She whispered a word she didn’t know she knew.
“Rhaz’kai.”
The flames around her shimmered, reversed direction, and obeyed. They twisted mid-air, curling back toward their casters, burning along the sigil-etched chains that bound their magic. One cultist screamed, engulfed in his own conjuring.
A masked warrior roared and charged at her, blade alight with phoenix fire.
Elira didn’t move.
A symbol burned in the air between them—a perfect circle with feathered wings and a sunburst core. Her sigil.
It flared with radiant heat and hit the man like a hammer. He collapsed, not burned—but purged, as if the flame itself had judged him and found him unworthy.
Elira stared at her hands.
The magic was not like her shadowbinding. It wasn’t pulled—it welled up from within her. As if a part of her had been asleep… and was now stirring.
Vaelin landed beside her, breathless, blood on his cheek and his cloak smoking. “You sure you’re not secretly divine?”
She swallowed hard. “No. I’m not sure at all.”
The remaining cultists fell back, murmuring in unison.
“She remembers…”
“She returns…”
The night calmed. Ash drifted through the trees like ghostly snow. In the distance, something beat its wings—slow, vast, and ancient. Not bird. Not beast.
Something watching.
Elira didn’t look away from the sigil still floating before her, its light slowly fading.
Vaelin sheathed his blade. “So. North, then?”
She nodded slowly. “To the Hearthspire.”
He stepped beside her. “To answers.”
___________________________________________________
All Parts of this Series
About the Creator
Richard Bailey
I am currently working on expanding my writing topics and exploring different areas and topics of writing. I have a personal history with a very severe form of treatment-resistant major depressive disorder.
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