Chapter 108
Chapter 108
*Jiselle*
The ritual chamber was built into the heart of the mountain–older than the sanctuary, older than Kael. No doors led to it. Only descent. Step by step, breath by breath, into stone and shadow and heat. The flames along the walls burned blue here, flickering along veins of molten rune–light etched into obsidian columns. It felt like standing inside a heartbeat.
Or a tomb.
Kael walked ahead of me in silence, his ceremonial cloak trailing embers as he moved. I followed, barefoot, the hem of my robe brushing against warm stone. The fabric was white this time–not crimson, not ash, not the flame–threaded silver I wore during the Trials. Just white. Pure. Blinding.
Wrong.
Dozens of rogue wolves had gathered in a crescent around the perimeter of the chamber. Some knelt. Others stood with their heads bowed. Not one of them looked at me. Not really. They looked at what they believed I was. What Kael had taught them to expect.
The Sovereign.
The Flame reborn.
The one who would fuse with the leyline itself and burn a new order into the bones of the world.
I wasn’t sure who I was anymore.
But I knew I wasn’t that.
Kael raised his hand and the chamber fell utterly still. The air itself stilled–thick, viscous, breathing.
“Today,” Kael said, “the flame ceases to wander.”
His voice carried easily, not loud but absolute.
“Today, she takes her place as the soul of our order. The breath of our cause. The fire to seal our future.”
No one cheered. They didn’t need to. Their silence was reverence. Their stillness, surrender.
He turned to me, gaze unreadable.
“Jiselle,” he said, “step forward.”
I did.
Because part of me still hoped I could choose how I stood–even if I had no say in where.
The runes flared beneath my feet, brighter with each step. A spiral of flame rose from the floor, licking around my ankles, then higher, tracing the curve of my body without burning.
Magic wrapped me.
Not gently.
Hungrily.
I clenched my fists to keep from shaking.
Kael raised both arms and began the chant.
Old words. Forgotten ones. I didn’t recognize the language, but the meaning crawled into my skin anyway. The leyline stirred beneath the stone, answering him, a deep thrum of power awakening like an ancient creature stretching in its lair.
Then he spoke my name.
And everything changed.
My magic, always coiled tight just under my surface, flared outward, struck like lightning. My chest tightene caught. The flame inside me trembled–not in fear, but in defiance.
And that’s when I saw him.
Nathaniel.
Not a memory. Not a ghost.
Through the fire.
Wounded.
Kneeling.
Calling my name.
breath
Chapter 108
The vision cut through the heat like a scream in a cathedral. He wasn’t near the sanctuary I knew that. But the bore scar of it–reacted. Split wide and raw, reaching for something I couldn’t name.
“Nathaniel,” I breathed.
Kael’s chant faltered.
I heard wolves gasp.
My body jerked as the leyline surged into me–too fast, too sharp. Magic poured in like a flood with no dam. The symbols around the room flared blindingly white, and the flame spiraling around me snappoose from its rhythm
I screamed.
Not from pain.
From everything.
The chamber convulsed. Columns cracked. The wolves near the edge stumbled back, shielding their faces. The spiral of flame turned jagged, wild, wrapping around me not like a crown–but a cage.
Kael moved toward me.
“Jiselle!”
I dropped to my knees.
Power surged from me in every direction, a shockwave of heat that splintered the floor beneath my palms. I felt the ground fracture. Felt stone groan beneath fire older than language.
Some of the rogue wolves ran.
I heard their feet.
Heard their fear.
Others fell to their knees, eyes wide, whispering a word I could barely register through the roar in my ears:
True.
“She’s the true flame.”
“Not a Sovereign–she’s the spark itself.”
Kael didn’t flinch.
But I saw his hands.
They trembled.
Not with awe.
With fury.
I felt him reach for the spiral of power around me, trying to mold it again, to steer it back under his control.
It didn’t answer him.
It answered me.
And I collapsed.
The fire didn’t vanish. It hovered. It wrapped around my body like smoke still choosing whether to burn.
I couldn’t move. Could barely breathe. My limbs were numb. My magic flickered violently under my skin like a broken storm. Everything inside me was too loud–too much.
But his name echoed again in my mind.
And I held onto it like a thread.
“Nathaniel…” I whispered.
The spiral around me went white.
Not red.
Not gold.
Not silver.
White.
The flames didn’t vanish.
They changed.
Shifted.
Chapter 108 Accepted
And I passed out with that final thought burning beneath my skin:
Maybe I was never meant to be crowned.
Maybe I was meant to ignite.
Or maybe I was meant to be a warning.
Before the darkness took hold completely, I heard a sound I hadn’t heard since the bond broke–a heartbeat that wasn’t mine. Faint. Staggered. Familiar. It didn’t come from outside. It came from within me. Like a second pulse buried beneath the one Kael tried to forge. I couldn’t feel his power anymore. Not like before. Not laced through mine like thread through cloth.
But Nate’s?
It had never really left.
That heartbeat reverberated through the marrow of me–not soft or soothing, but steady. Not claiming. Just present.
There.
And with it came a memory not of flames or war or prophecy, but a voice I barely recognized as mine. A voice from the day he rejected me–when everything fell apart.
“I would’ve chosen you anyway.”
It echoed now–not as a wound.
As a tether.
Because he still called me by name.
Not Sovereign.
Not Ethereal.
Not Flame.
Just Jiselle.
And somehow, through the blaze and the brokenness and the unbearable light, I remembered that name mattered more than any crown.
My name.
His voice.
The spiral of fire that had held me like a ritual softened as if listening.
And in the last breath I could hold, before I lost the room and the world and Kael’s scowl and the wolves whispering things
I didn’t want to hear, I whispered one word again–not to summon, not to plead.
But to remember.
“Nathaniel…”
The flames didn’t rage.
They bowed.
