Page 177 of The Shattered Rite
“Behold—the final three.”
The chosen stepped forward, Garic moving first. Eliryn followed, pace even despite the weight of every eye upon her. Vaeronth showed her where the edges were, where the stone ended and the wind began. The dais rose before them, a half-circle ringed with flame inlaid into the stone, its fire a constant burn, neither fed nor fading.
King Thalen stood at its center, robed in black and silver, the Flame’s light casting sharp shadows across his features. The three judges from the Hall of Scribes stood to one side. The High Flamekeeper stood to the other, her red and gold robes rippling like fire itself.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
The Flamekeeper raised her hands.
The fire in the dais flared, not brighter, not hotter, but taller, as if reaching up to touch the sky. Wind stirred the edges of Eliryn’s hair. Behind her closed lids, darkness still reigned, but she could feel it- the air shifting, the moment rising toward something sharp and irreversible.
“You have all come here to witness the will of the Flame,” the Flamekeeper intoned, her voice full and deep. “Three remain. Three who endured. And only one shall bear the burden of its choosing.”
A breathless silence stretched across the crowd.
Eliryn’s heart pounded behind her ribs, unsteady and hard. She could feel Garic’s tension next to her like static in the air. Vraxxis stood to her left, arms folded behind his back, utterly still.
They had made peace with the trial’s end, but not with this.
“Step forward,” the Flamekeeper commanded. “Each of you.”
Garic moved first, his boots quiet on the marble. Eliryn followed, guided by Vaeronth’s vision; still only a pale, colorless echo of true sight, but enough to not make a fool out of herself.Vraxxis joined them, the three of them now standing evenly spaced in a line before the Flame.
“We invoke now the sacred rite of descent,” the Flamekeeper continued. “Through battle, through mind, through loss, and through the fire itself, the chosen shall be marked. Let there be no further introduction; let us move into the ceremony.”
A long pause followed.
Then the Flame moved.
Not a flare. Not an inferno.
A coiled arch of precision.
A single tendril of fire, too precise to be wild, too alive to be called mere magic. It rose from the dais like a summoned thing, twisting higher, shimmering gold edged in deep crimson.
It drifted toward Garic first.
Eliryn felt him tense beside her as the Flame circled him once, close enough to sear—but not enough to choose.
It moved on.
To Vraxxis.
The Flame lingered there longer, orbiting him slowly, considering him as an option. His spine straightened. His jaw clenched.
But it left him, too.
And then—
She felt it.
Before she saw it.
Heat brushed her collarbones, her bare throat, her chest.
Her whole body tightened in instinctive fear—but it wasn’t burning.
The Flame stopped before her, hovering.
