The air smelled of burning sugar and regret.

  Aeris stood at the edge of Lumin Hollow’s great square, watching as the Festival of Dying Embers unfolded in a riot of sparks and laughter. Around her, people tossed effigies into the towering bonfire—twisted dolls of straw and cloth, each one a whispered sin, a buried shame. The flames devoured them greedily, turning memory into smoke.

  She hated this festival.

  “You’re brooding,” Sorin said, appearing at her elbow like a particularly persistent shadow. His grin was all teeth, but his eyes kept flicking to the fire, to the way his own scars caught the light—golden cracks pulsing faintly, as if answering some silent call.

  “I’m thinking,” Aeris corrected. “A foreign concept to you, I know.”

  “Ouch.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “And here I was going to offer you a candied fig.”

  “You stole it.”

  “I liberated it. From a very rude merchant who overcharges for dried fruit.” He popped it into his mouth, chewing obnoxiously. “So. What’s your effigy this year?”

  Aeris didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Her gaze drifted to the far side of the square, where a woman in flowing crimson silks spun through the crowd, trailing embers from her fingertips. Virellia.

  Sorin followed her stare. “Ah.”

  “Ah,” Aeris mimicked, flat.

  “You could talk to her.”

  “I could stab you instead. It’d be more productive.”

  Sorin laughed, but it faded too quickly. His fingers twitched, the golden scars along his knuckles flaring as a gust of wind sent the bonfire roaring higher. For a heartbeat, the flames bent toward him—not away, not in fear, but in something like recognition.

  Then the moment passed.

  Aeris pretended not to notice.

  She had spent years in the Grand Archive, surrounded by the ghosts of history. Books didn’t lie—not the way people did. Words stayed fixed. Ink didn’t rewrite itself to soften the past.

  But tonight, the city celebrated forgetting.

  “It’s a mercy,” Sorin said, as if reading her thoughts. He nodded toward a weeping man tossing an effigy into the flames. “Letting go.”

  Aeris’s fingers tightened around the book in her satchel—The Hollow King’s Last Testament. It still hummed faintly, warm as a living thing. “Is it? Or is it just cowardice?”

  Sorin tilted his head. “You’d rather people choke on their regrets forever?”

  “I’d rather they learn from them.”

  He smirked. “Spoken like a true archivist.”

  “Spoken like someone who remembers,” she shot back.

  A shadow flickered behind his eyes. She wondered, not for the first time, what it was like to be Sorin—to carry scars that burned gold, to steal books that whispered back, to not even know your own past.

  Did he dream of the Hollow King too?

  The crowd shifted, parting around a figure in battered armor. Riven. The knight moved like a ghost, his gaze fixed on the city’s oldest ruin—the Broken Sanctum, its jagged spires clawing at the sky.

  Aeris had tried to speak to him once, back when she still believed in answers. He’d only said, “Some things are better left buried.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Now, his eyes locked onto Sorin.

  And then—

  A hand clamped onto Sorin’s shoulder.

  Aeris spun.

  A Sanctum Knight stood there, his polished armor gleaming in the firelight. His grip was iron. His voice was colder.

  “You,” he breathed. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  Sorin went very still.

  The knight drew his blade.

  The words slithered through Aeris’s mind, unbidden. She had read them in the Testament, scrawled in the margins like a confession.

  Now, watching the sword rise toward Sorin’s throat, she wondered if the Hollow King had seen their own end coming too.

  The festival raged on around them, oblivious. A child shrieked with laughter. A fire-dancer spun, trailing sparks. Virellia’s voice rang out above the noise, singing something bright and reckless.

  But here, in this pocket of stillness, the air tasted like metal.

  Like a storm about to break.

  As the knight’s blade caught the light, Aeris saw it—the hilt was engraved with a crown.

  The same crown from the book.

  For a heartbeat, no one moved.

  The Sanctum Knight’s sword hovered a finger’s width from Sorin’s neck, its edge catching the bonfire’s glow. The crowd around them still laughed, still danced—oblivious to the silent war unfolding in their midst.

  Aeris’s fingers twitched toward her dagger.

  Then Sorin grinned.

  “Well,” he said, voice light as if discussing the weather, “that’s awkward.”

  The knight’s grip tightened. “You were there that night. At the Sanctum.”

  Sorin blinked. “Was I? I’m terrible with dates. And locations. And, honestly, faces—”

  The blade pressed closer. A thin line of blood welled against Sorin’s throat.

  Aeris acted.

  Her dagger found the gap between the knight’s armor plates, pricking the soft flesh beneath his ribs. “Let him go,” she said, low and lethal.

  The knight didn’t flinch. “You don’t know what he is.”

  “I know he’s an idiot,” Aeris said. “But he’s my idiot.”

  Behind them, Kael cleared his throat. “Our idiot, technically.”

  The knight’s eyes flicked between them—then, with a disgusted noise, he shoved Sorin away. “The Order will hear of this.”

  “Oh good,” Sorin said, rubbing his neck. “I love meetings.”

  The knight spat at his feet and vanished into the crowd.

  Aeris didn’t relax. The festival’s noise pressed in around them, suddenly too loud, too bright.

  “That,” Kael announced, “was dramatic.”

  Sorin’s grin faltered. His fingers brushed the blood on his throat, staring at the crimson smear as if it held answers.

  Aeris grabbed his wrist. “We need to go. Now.”

  But before they could move, fire erupted in their path.

  Not the bonfire’s steady burn—this was wild, alive, twisting into shapes like dancing serpents. And at its heart stood her.

  Virellia.

  Aeris’s sister hadn’t aged a day in five years. Her dark skin gleamed with sweat and ember-light, her braids threaded with gold wire that chimed as she moved. The crowd cheered as she spun, flames licking her fingertips like adoring pets.

  Then her gaze locked onto Aeris.

  The fire between them curved, as if bowing.

  Virellia’s smile sharpened. “Little sister,” she called, voice like honey and smoke. “Come to burn something finally?”

  Aeris’s jaw tightened. “Not interested.”

  “Liar.” Virellia’s eyes flicked to Sorin, to his scars. Her smile didn’t waver, but something in her posture shifted—recognition. “Oh. Oh. You’ve been busy.”

  Sorin tilted his head. “Do I know you?”

  “No,” Virellia said softly. “But you will.”

  Then she snapped her fingers.

  The fire exploded—not toward them, but upward, a column of light that painted the square in gold and shadow. The crowd gasped, applauding. By the time the embers faded, Virellia was gone.

  They didn’t speak until they reached the Broken Sanctum’s edge.

  The ruin loomed ahead, its shattered arches like ribs of a long-dead beast. At its base stood Riven, the melancholic knight, his sword planted in the earth as if holding the very ground together.

  He didn’t turn as they approached. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Aeris stepped forward. “We need answers.”

  “Answers die here.” Riven’s voice was gravel and old wounds. “Just like the king did.”

  Sorin went still. “What do you know about the Hollow King?”

  Riven finally looked at him. His eyes were the color of tarnished silver. “More than you want to.”

  Aeris pulled the Testament from her satchel. The book pulsed faintly, its pages trembling as if eager to be opened. “Then tell us what this is.”

  Riven’s breath hissed through his teeth. “Where did you—?”

  “Stolen,” Kael supplied helpfully.

  Riven stared at the book like it was a venomous snake. “That,” he said slowly, “is a last will. And a trap.”

  A gust of wind howled through the ruins. Somewhere in the distance, the festival’s laughter seemed to fade.

  Sorin’s scars burned gold.

  Riven’s gaze dropped to them. “You’re remembering, aren’t you?”

  Sorin’s voice was barely audible. “Falling. I keep dreaming of falling.”

  Riven closed his eyes. “Then it’s already begun.”

  Aeris opened the book.

  The pages moved on their own, flipping to an illustration she hadn’t seen before—a figure in a pale mask, standing before a throne of shattered stone.

  The Exiled One.

  And beneath it, scrawled in ink that shimmered like liquid gold:

  “Nothing lasts—not even kings.”

  Then—

  The bonfire in the distance roared higher, its flames twisting into a shape too familiar, too alive.

  A mask of fire stared back at them.

  The Exiled One was here.