It had been one hundred and one dawns since Kael’s flame turned to light.

The world had found peace but peace felt like silence after thunder. The rivers hummed softer. The mountains slept. Even the Songborn, once threads of melody, moved like gentle wind through the grasslands.

Each morning, I stood at the Ashhaven cliffs, where Kael’s last fire met the wind. Beneath the blackened earth, silver shoots pulsed with faint light like breath trying to remember itself.

And one morning, it ...