The Reign of Ash and Blossom Ch. 5

Chapter 5 – The Fugitives and the Flame

The mountains of Eldoria had once been crowned with orchards and bright stone keeps. Now, only wind and ash lingered in the valleys. Along a narrow pass, a small band of survivors trudged, cloaks drawn close against the chill. Among them was the king’s daughter, her regal bearing worn thin by hunger, and Kael’s family – his wife and children – their faces hardening into masks of endurance.

The king’s daughter walked close to Kael’s wife, almost as if seeking warmth, she did not realize she needed. There was a familiarity in her step, a strange echo that unsettled and comforted all at once. Sometimes, when the firelight struck her face just so, Kael’s wife would start, her breath catching as if she glimpsed her own reflection – or a memory of someone lost.

But no reflection could shield them from the news carried by scouts and wanderers. Kael, once captain of the High Guard, was no spoken of in fearful tones. A warlord with white flame in his eyes, cutting down kings and burning cities, all beneath the banner of Selvara, the Blooming Queen. To the world, he was no longer a man but a weapon.

One night, beneath the jagged teeth of the cliffs, they found shelter in a cave. The youngest child asked, voice trembling, “Is Father gone forever?” no one answered. The silence itself felt like a grave. But the king’s daughter reached for the boy’s hand, her own voice steady: “no flame burns without end.”

It was then that Kael’s wife spoke, her voice heavy with both hope and denial. “He swore to protect us. That vow still lives within him, no matter what she has done.”

The princess turned, her eyes gleaming strangely in the firelight. “Perhaps that vow is more than words. Perhaps it is what will break her hold.”

The others exchanged uneasy glances, for the girl’s words carried a weight that felt older than her years. She had begun to dream strange dreams since Eldoria’s fall – of blossoms that bled light, of a blade buried in roots, of Kael standing torn between fire and shadow.

Driven by these visions, the fugitives pressed deeper into the mountains, seeking the ruins of an ancient shrine long forgotten by the kingdoms. Legends said it was built when the gods themselves first walked the earth, a place where vows and blood could be bound into flame.at the shrine, crumbled but still humming with power, they found a hermit who claimed to have waited for them. His eyes were clouded with age, but his voice was sharp as flint. “The captain is not lost. He is bound. And only what binds him to this world can cut the chains she has forged.”

They did not understand, but the hermit’s gaze lingered on the king’s daughter. “The flame has already chosen its vessel. The rest is yours to decide.”

Unease rippled through the group. The princess shrank back, but Kael’s wife stepped closer, placing a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Then she is part of us now,” she whispered. “She is mine as much as my own children.”

The hermit nodded, as if he had been waiting for those very words. “So, it is sealed.”

When they left the shrine, the mountain wind carried their breath away, but in each heart, there burned something small and defiant. They were hunted, outmatched, and broken. Yet for the first time since Eldoria fell, the fugitives felt hope – faint and flickering though it was – had not been entirely extinguished.

And in the distance, across the kingdoms drowned in ash and blossom, Kael marched at Selvara’s side, the flame of his vow buried deep within him, waiting for the moment it would burn free again.