CHAPTER 111: CHAPTER 110 - EMBERED WITNESS

Caliste’s feet carried him over the threshold with a slow, deliberate tread.

The entrance to the hollow yawned wide and soundless before him, the stone arch above etched with faded carvings that had long since lost their meaning to common tongues. Every inch of the corridor whispered a story too ancient for pages, too heavy for voices. The very air inside the slope was different—cool, mineral, soaked with memory.

As he followed the figure in grey deeper underground, the daylight behind them faded gradually into nothing. No torches lined the walls, yet a dim, pulsing glow emanated from the veins of crystal embedded in the stone. It wasn’t magic—at least, not in the way Caliste understood magic. It was something more primal. Like the heartbeat of the world itself had left traces here, and the stone had learned to echo it.

The figure said nothing.

Their robe barely rustled as they moved. There was a kind of reverence to every step, as if each one was a verse in a forgotten ritual. Caliste kept pace, his hand brushing the hilt of his blade not out of fear, but out of grounding—a reminder of who he was, and how far he had come.

The tunnel narrowed before widening again, opening into a massive chamber that seemed to bend space itself. There were no pillars. No supports. The walls, curved and seamless, pulsed with lines of glowing script—glyphs he recognized from fragments in the Sanctum’s archives. The language of the First Flame.

And in the center of the chamber stood seven figures, each garbed in the same grey robes, each mask shaped like a different expression of the eye: one open, one shut, one weeping, one blind.

None turned to look at him.

Not yet.

The original figure stepped forward and took their place among them, as if they had never left. A single stone bench rested across from the semicircle they formed, carved from blackened basalt and smooth as glass. Caliste stepped toward it.

He didn’t sit.

Not yet.

He let the silence stretch, waiting to see if any among them would speak first.

When none did, he broke it himself.

"Why now?" he asked, voice low but firm. "Why reveal yourselves after all this time?"

A long pause followed.

Then the mask of the open eye turned toward him, and a voice answered—not harshly, but with the depth of one who has seen countless tides rise and fall.

"Because the fire has passed its trial. And so have you."

Another voice joined, this one from the mask shaped like tears.

"The Flame remembers those who carry the burden of truth. And now, truth must burn again."

Caliste’s jaw tightened. "You talk like the war isn’t over."

The blind eye replied next.

"It never was."

And there, in that subterranean cathedral of breath and stone and flickering truth, Caliste finally understood:

He had not ended the cycle by slaying Alek.

He had only exposed the root.

And the fire was still spreading.

***

The moment Caliste’s fingers closed around the relic, something ancient and unseen surged through him—like being submerged in a current that remembered how the world had once burned.

The cloth beneath his grip felt impossibly thin, yet each thread was laced with something more than fabric. Memory, perhaps. Or consecration. The sigils across the surface flared to life at his touch—not violently, but with an eerie grace, as though acknowledging him rather than reacting to him. They pulsed once, then twice, then vanished, like old guardians retreating now that their purpose had been fulfilled.

Behind him, none of the Witnesses moved.

They watched in silence, the kind that bore reverence—not fear, not expectation, but solemnity. As if they had all gathered to observe a moment that had been prophesied, and now were merely waiting to see what kind of man Caliste would become beneath its weight.

He unwrapped the relic slowly.

The cloth folded back, revealing a thin, curved object of dull bronze and darkened glass—no bigger than a palm, shaped like a crescent, engraved with runes so small they looked like cracks. At first, it appeared inert.

Then it opened.

Not with gears.

With intent.

Two halves split silently, revealing within not a core of energy, but a shimmer of memory. Images bloomed in the air above it like reflections on the surface of water.

A city—massive, domed, suspended over molten light. Roads of obsidian carved into hexagonal precision. People robed in flame-colored silk, faces hidden behind masks that bore neither emotion nor identity. It was not the past Caliste had known.

It was older.

This... this was the world before the first tyrant.

The voice of the open eye echoed behind him.

"This is the truth that came before the lie."

Caliste stepped forward, eyes drawn to the visions shifting with each passing second.

He saw a meeting—councils of flame and thought. He saw the First Flame, not as an altar or a weapon, but as a philosophy. A choice that had once been pure.

And then, he saw its corruption.

The moment when belief hardened into dogma.

When the idea of protection became one of control.

He saw the first war—not one fought with swords, but with symbols. Glyphs rewritten. Truth rebranded. Power renamed.

His knees nearly buckled beneath the weight of it.

And still the relic showed more.

He saw a figure—a woman with hair like coiled smoke and eyes the color of molten ore. Her name was never spoken, but Caliste felt it vibrate in his bones.

She was the first to wield the Flame with will alone.

The first to refuse the throne.

The first to be erased from history.

"You see now," said the weeping eye. "What you ended was a shadow of this. A mimic."

Caliste didn’t respond. He couldn’t.

The chamber grew cold, the images fading back into the relic as it slowly closed itself once more, sealing the visions within. He clutched it to his chest for a moment, the cold metal warming slightly against his skin as if remembering the echo of fire.

When he turned back to the Witnesses, his voice came low but clear.

"What do you want me to do?"

This time, all seven voices answered at once.

"Plant it."

He blinked. "What?"

"Take the relic. Find where the flame first touched the world. Bury it in the ash beneath the roots of the first tree. The fire must be reborn—not as a weapon, but as a memory."

"And if I fail?"

The blind eye spoke last.

"Then the world will forget again."

Caliste looked down at the relic in his hand.

Not a weapon.

A seed.

And with it, a task not of conquest—

but of rebirth.

***

He left the hollow before dawn.

The chamber of the Embered Witnesses had faded behind him, swallowed once more by stone and silence, as though it had only ever existed for him and would vanish now that his purpose was named. No words had been exchanged after the relic was given. None were needed. The task had been passed down like a rite—old as ruin, quiet as ash.

Outside, the air tasted different.

Sharper. Cooler.

The world itself seemed to acknowledge the weight he now carried in the fold of his cloak. The relic—still warm from the chamber—rested beneath the fabric over his chest. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat not his own. Not intrusive, not loud. Just present. Just alive.

He stood for a moment at the crest of the hill, eyes tracing the horizon.

It was not a landscape that offered answers.

The land east of the Witnesses was a sprawling tangle of valleys and broken forests, fractured long ago by wars that had never made it into official records. The trees here grew crooked, as though bent by memory. The soil was dry and iron-rich. Flowers did not bloom. Birds did not sing.

But there was life.

And somewhere beneath it, old roots still held.

He walked until the sky bloomed copper.

Every step took him farther from firelight, and deeper into myth.

On the third day, the visions began.

Not dreams.

Visions.

He would blink, and see flashes—brief, flickering, layered like folds of paper cut too thin.

Once, he saw the woman with the molten eyes again—standing on a mountain, her hands pressed to bark that bled light instead of sap. Around her, voices chanted a name he couldn’t understand.

Another time, he saw himself—not as he was, but older. Weathered. With the same seed in hand, but no blade at his hip.

He stopped walking after that one.

Sat beneath a jagged stone arch that had once been part of a forgotten outpost, and stared at the relic for a long while. It hadn’t changed. Still sealed. Still humming.

But the visions felt like a pull.

Not toward a destination.

Toward a decision.

He remembered what the Witnesses had said.

Bury it beneath the roots of the first tree.

And yet...

Where did the first tree grow?

Was it metaphor?

Or was it real?

He passed through the remnants of an old orchard by dusk on the sixth day.

The trees here were dead—but not destroyed. They stood upright, pale grey, leaves turned to dust long ago, yet their trunks had not rotted. They seemed almost petrified, fossilized mid-growth. When he ran a hand across one, it felt like stone—but the rings were warm.

He camped beneath one that night, using no fire.

The stars were enough.

And again, he dreamed.

This time, of a forest made of flame.

Not burning.

Made of it.

Trunks of ember. Leaves like coals on the wind. A canopy that lit the sky from within.

He stood at its center, the seed in his palm, and the voice from the hollow whispered—

Not here.

Deeper.

Lower.

When he awoke, he knew where he had to go.

Not forward.

Down.

The next part of the journey was not marked on any map.

He found the crevasse by accident—following an animal trail that veered off the main ridge into thick brush. He nearly missed it. The crack in the earth was thin at first, no wider than a man’s stride. But as he approached, the wind changed direction.

Blew into the gap.

And did not come out.

He stood at its edge for a long time.

Then, with one last glance at the sky above, he climbed down.

Hand over stone. Foot to root.

No rope. No light.

Only instinct.

And the seed, pulsing in his cloak.

Waiting.

Patient.

As though it had always known—

He would choose the dark.