Beneath the EmbersSelena’s POVThe fourth city was different. Not because of the people, or the crowd size, or even the tense weather that made everything feel like a storm waiting to collapse. It was the silence. Heavier. Not out of reverence or anticipation. It felt staged. Calculated. Like the quiet before a courtroom verdict and I had already stepped into the defendant’s chair without realizing it. We arrived in the early morning, the cold biting deeper than the last three stops, and by the time I took the parchment into my hands, I knew something was wrong. The usual eyes that looked to me for clarity were absent. Replaced by observers who weren’t observing they were recording. Not the words. Not the creed. But me.Michelle stood off to the left, a little closer than usual, her gaze subtly scanning the perimeter, and I saw the tightness in her jaw that confirmed I wasn’t imagining it. Jason, stationed behind me near the crowd’s rear line, wasn’t fidgeting like he sometimes d
Ink and EmbersSelena’s POVI hadn’t even left the foundry when the letter arrived. No courier, no device alert, no stamp just a folded sheet of pale ash-colored paper left in the center of the manuscript room, right beside the sealed case where the original Flame Creed now rested under protective glass. It hadn’t been there when I entered. Michelle had done the final sweep herself. But when I turned back from speaking with Jason near the rear exit, it was there. Waiting. Silent. Unfolded, but not carelessly so. Like it knew it didn’t need dramatics to be dangerous.The paper was smooth. Untouched by creases, as if whoever delivered it had done so with reverence, not haste. I read the first line without hesitation, and it was exactly the voice I feared it would be.Selena,Fire is honest, yes. But it forgets that smoke always gets there first. You spoke today like a woman who still believes in oxygen. But my dear… not all rooms have windows. Not all doors are meant to be opened. I s
The Convocation of FireSelena’s POVThe call went out at dawn.No codes. No layered encryption. No silence. For the first time since the creed was born, I sent the invitation openly, under my own name, and signed it with the same ink I used to write the first lines by hand. It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t a plea. It was a gathering. A line drawn not in sand or blood but in clarity. I invited every flame faction still active, every neutral group observing from the shadows, and even those suspected of leaning toward Mikhail’s new movement. No gatekeeping. No exclusion. I wanted them to come. All of them. Because this wasn’t about territory anymore it was about truth, and whether it could survive the weight of too many interpretations.We chose a decommissioned foundry in old Veyrin, a ringed structure with natural acoustics and solid structural integrity. Jason’s team swept it six times before I even entered. Michelle tripled security on the interior walls, planted silent identifiers
The War Between Shadows and FlameSelena’s POVBy the end of the third week, we stopped pretending this wasn’t a war. There were no formal declarations, no drawn battle lines, no banners raised in defiance. But we felt it in the silence of the defunct comm lines, in the way allies delayed responses that used to come in seconds, in the strange absences of familiar names from our daily intelligence briefings. They weren’t gone, not all of them, but they were quieter. Watching. Waiting. Listening to a voice that didn’t speak through bulletins or summits but filtered through rumor, paranoia, and what Jason now called “the whisper chain.” Mikhail wasn’t building with steel or strategy. He was building belief. And belief was harder to kill than blood.Michelle entered the command room that morning with eyes sharper than usual, a gesture in her hand that made even Jason rise before she spoke. “We lost the Flamehold in Drevnik.” No one responded. We’d been expecting it. “No casualties. Our
When Smoke SpeaksSelena’s POVThe warehouse still smelled like oil and iron when we stepped out. The air was thick with the aftertaste of memory and warning, and even though Mikhail had left without drawing a weapon, the tension his presence left behind clung to my skin like ash. I didn’t say anything as we crossed the cracked pavement of the lot, my boots scraping against gravel with every step. Jason remained at my side, jaw tight, his silence speaking volumes. Michelle followed closely, one hand resting near the weapon at her hip not out of fear, but out of instinct. She knew, as I did, that men like Mikhail never reappeared just to speak. Their words were always the first layer of something far more dangerous. And though he had walked away into the fog, I felt it the way the ground had shifted beneath us again. He didn’t need a throne or a faction. His presence alone was a spark waiting for oxygen.We entered the safe house thirty minutes later, a temporary space we’d prepar
The First Fire ReturnsSelena’s POVI knew something was wrong the moment the message arrived without a sender ID. It wasn’t encrypted. It wasn’t threatening. Just a plain text email that slipped past every firewall Michelle had set, every digital lock Jason had reinforced. But it wasn’t the breach that disturbed me it was the silence inside the message. No signature. No subject. Just one line that hit like a fist to the chest: He’s still alive. He never left. And beneath it, a single attachment a photograph.I opened it, fingers already trembling before the image appeared. The photo wasn’t recent. It was years old, distorted by time and static, but I recognized the background. The sharp arch of stone. The window cracked at the top. A warehouse we once used during a covert mission in North Alwick one where we lost three operatives and nearly lost Jason. But it wasn’t the setting that stole the breath from my lungs. It was the face standing in the shadows behind the crates. Parti