Chapter 2 – Black Fire
I should have died.
That thought followed me as we walked away from the ruins of Ashvale, clinging to my mind with every step. My body felt wrong—lighter and heavier at the same time, as if something inside me had been torn apart and rebuilt without permission. Each breath scraped my chest, and my legs moved only because stopping felt worse.
The road south cut through fields that were no longer fields. What had once been grain and soil was now scorched earth, cracked and blackened. Smoke drifted behind us, rising from the direction of my village like a wound that refused to close. I did not look back. I was afraid that if I did, I would see faces in the ash—my father's among them—watching me walk away.
Mira led the way, her steps steady, unhurried. She moved like someone who had learned long ago that panic only made death quicker. That calm terrified me. It meant what had happened to Ashvale was not rare.
"You're still breathing," she said without turning around. "That's better than most."
I let out a bitter laugh. "That's your comfort?"
She stopped and faced me. Her eyes were sharp, calculating, weighing me the way a smith weighs flawed steel. "Most first awakenings end in madness or death. Your body accepted the Crown. Your mind bent, but did not break."
"The Crown," I repeated quietly.
"The Ashen Crown," she corrected. "One of seven."
The name stirred something beneath my ribs. Heat flared, sudden and unwelcome. Black embers flickered across my knuckles before I forced my hands into fists.
Mira noticed instantly. "Control it. Now."
"I'm trying."
"That's not control," she said flatly. "That's fear pretending to obey."
We walked until night swallowed the road. By the time we stopped, exhaustion crashed into me all at once. My knees buckled and I collapsed beside a dead tree, my whole body shaking.
When I finally stopped moving, the pain came. Burns throbbed beneath my skin. My shoulder screamed every time I breathed. My hands would not stop trembling.
Mira planted her staff into the ground between us. The runes carved into it pulsed faintly, alive in the dark.
"You need to listen," she said. "The Crown answers emotion. Panic feeds it. Rage fuels it. If you don't learn control, it will hollow you out and move on."
"I didn't ask for this," I snapped. "I didn't want any of it."
"No one chosen ever does."
The fire answered anyway.
Warmth bloomed behind my ribs, spreading too fast. I gasped as black flames crawled across my arms, licking my skin without burning it. The ground beneath us began to glow.
"Focus!" Mira shouted.
"I am!"
I wasn't. Terror drowned every thought.
The flames surged. Trees ignited without sound. Stone warped and cracked. Power rushed through me like a flood breaking a dam, eager and endless.
It wanted release.
Pain tore through my skull. My vision bled red and black. Somewhere in the chaos, I realized I was screaming.
Then Mira slammed her staff into the ground.
Light exploded outward, pale and suffocating. The fire choked, shrank, and died beneath the pressure. I collapsed forward, vomiting ash onto the scorched earth.
When I could finally see again, the clearing was ruined. Melted soil. Smoldering stumps. Silence.
"That," Mira said coldly, "is why the Crowns end ages."
We did not sleep well.
Sleep came in broken shards. Every time I closed my eyes, fire followed. I dreamed of Ashvale as it once was—lanterns glowing, voices laughing—only for the images to peel away and reveal blackened bones beneath. In one dream, I stood in the middle of the village square, the Ashen Crown hovering above my head like a judgment. People knelt before me, their faces empty, their mouths moving without sound. When I reached out to help them, they crumbled into ash.
I woke choking on smoke that wasn't there.
Mira was already awake, seated cross-legged with her staff laid across her knees. She watched me with the same careful distance she always kept, as if getting too close might trigger something catastrophic.
"You felt it again," she said.
I nodded, rubbing my hands together. Even now, faint warmth lingered beneath my skin, a reminder that the fire was never truly gone. "It doesn't stop," I admitted. "It's like it's waiting for me to slip."
"It is," Mira replied. "The Crowns are not tools. They are wills. Old ones." She hesitated, then added, "The Ashen Crown is especially eager. Destruction comes easily to it."
"That's comforting."
She almost smiled. "Fear keeps you alive. Respect keeps others alive."
She made me stand.
For the next hour, she drilled me without mercy. Breathing patterns. Focus exercises. Visualizing the fire as something contained, shaped, limited. Every failure sent sparks skittering across the ground. Every success left me shaking with exhaustion.
By the time she finally let me sit, my muscles burned worse than the flames ever had.
"This is the bare minimum," she said. "If you survive long enough, we'll do more."
Survive. The word lingered heavily between us.
I was about to ask who would be hunting us when the air shifted—subtle, but unmistakable. Mira stiffened, her hand tightening around her staff.
"Too late," she murmured.
The warmth beneath my skin flared in response, sharp and instinctive. My heart began to pound, each beat echoing with the same terrible certainty I had felt in Ashvale. Whatever was coming, the Crown already knew. The fire stirred, coiling tight inside me, waiting not for permission—but for need.
Before dawn, the sound of hooves reached us through the mist.
Mira was standing before I could move. Armored riders emerged from the fog, their presence crushing the air itself.
At their head rode a man in dark armor trimmed with silver. He dismounted slowly, eyes never leaving me.
Mira's voice dropped to a whisper. "Valcren. Shadow Crown bearer."
He smiled.
"So," he said pleasantly, "the king of ashes still lives."
Something inside me answered him with fire.