Obsidian Memories

Asha, Kael, and Lirien emerged from the mist like shadows born by the end of the world. The climb to the Broken Mountains had taken three days, crossing forgotten passes and crags marked with symbols that crumbled at the touch. The air here was thinner, scented with resin and iron, and charged with a mineral tension that reminded Asha of the moments before a revelation in the ashes. Every step, every inhalation, seemed like an unspoken prayer.

The sky was an opaque bowl, starless. The world felt suspended, contained. The mountains weren't simple elevations: they were remnants of a body older than time. Asha felt it in her bones. As if Aeolina had brought her here not just to hide her, but to show her something. Or someone. The web of fire she'd felt beneath her skin, ever since the fragment of the Temple's Heart had pulsed in her chest, throbbed more strongly now. It was as if these mountains were also a node. A sleeping heartbeat of the net.

Kael barely spoke during the journey. His right arm, petrified to the shoulder, had begun to lose temperature. Asha watched him out of the corner of her eye, as if his skin might crack with too direct a gaze. Each step seemed to cost him more, but he didn't complain. He never did. Yet the trembling in his left hand, and the way his breath condensed more heavily than the others', betrayed the stone's progress. Sometimes, when he thought she wasn't looking, he pressed his fingers to his heart, as if trying to sense whether he was still human.

Lirien led the way, guiding them with the certainty of someone who had read this path not on maps, but in dreams. He wore a threadbare tunic, without insignia. He had changed since the fall of the temple. More severe, more silent. But also more dangerous. Like a torch that knows when not to burn. He had taken up the rebel cause with an intensity that left no room for doubt or mourning. Every night, she studied scrolls with the same ferocity with which others sharpened swords.

They reached the edge of a ledge covered in red lichen. Beyond, a valley yawned between twisted formations that looked like stone teeth. In the center, amidst faint plumes of smoke, rose the ruins of a fortress buried in the rock. It wasn't a refuge. It was a witness. The wind carried a strange murmur, as if the stones remembered having been something else: columns of a forgotten temple, or the bones of an extinct creature.

A hooded figure waited for them between the broken pillars. Tall, upright, as if time owed it respect. Asha noticed the symbol on its staff: a broken spiral surrounded by fire. She recognized the mark. It was from the Keepers... but inverted. The staff also had a dark crack, as if an invisible energy had split it from within.

"Welcome, remembering flame," the figure said, its voice like muffled thunder. "We were waiting for you."

Asha took a step forward. She felt the fragment of the Temple's Heart pulsing beneath her clothes, against her skin. It throbbed with those words, as if responding. Heat was a language. And it spoke of recognition.

"Who are they?" Kael asked, his voice raspy.

"The Children of Broken Fire," Lirien answered, without looking back. "Those who survived the betrayal of their own kind."

The figure nodded. She lowered her hood. She was a woman with hair as white as ash, dark skin marked with fiery lines that weren't tattoos, but raw scars. Or burns that hadn't hurt. Her eyes were an old amber, almost solid. She didn't blink. She looked as if she saw the words inside.

"You have brought the first fragment," she said. "Then there is still hope."

Asha tightened her fingers around the hidden fragment. She felt everything in her burning a little more each day, and at the same time, something was falling apart. Not in her body, but in her memory. There were times when she confused other people's memories with her own. The voices of dead women spoke through her mouth in her dreams.

"The empire has begun to hunt nodes," Lirien said. "They know there are more hearts. More memories."

"And you are the only one who can hold them," the woman added. "If the ashes are entrusted to those who don't remember... they become ruin."

Kael leaned against a rock. He said nothing. His breathing was slow. The veins near his petrified shoulder swelled. Asha couldn't stop staring at his neck, as if the stone might creep out at any moment. The obsidian heart, invisible beneath his skin, beat with an alien frequency. Not like a muscle. Like a warning.

"I need to learn," Asha said. To contain the memories. To not get lost in them.

"Then you've come to the right place," the old woman said. "But the price will be high."

Asha didn't look away. The shard burned a little brighter in her chest. Behind her, Kael murmured her name. And the sound of that word seemed to ignite something in the ruins. Several hidden torches, unlit for years, flickered as if answering the call. It was the web. Still alive.

The Children of Broken Fire led them through a sunken passage, where the walls were covered with barely visible frescoes: battles without heroes, guardians falling at human hands, flames extinguished and then rekindled. Asha felt the images move, just by looking at them.

They descended to a circular chamber where the stone thrummed with a subterranean energy. There, others awaited them: men and women of all ages, bearing markings similar to the old woman's. Some young, others so old they seemed sculpted by time. All eyes rested on her. Not with devotion, but with expectation. As if expecting to be proven wrong.

"Here you will learn to resist the meltdown," the woman said. "To hold without turning. To remember without disappearing. But you must give up something first."

"What?" Asha asked, though she already feared the answer.

"Apart from your emotions," the woman said. "Ashes respond to feeling. If you feel too much... they drag you down. If you feel nothing... they ignore you. You must find balance. And that only comes from losing something real."

Asha swallowed. She thought of her mother. Of the voices in the ash. Of the moment she had first touched the Heart. All of that had been guided by emotion. Who was she without that?

"You will have to choose," the old woman continued. "A memory to seal. An emotion to silence. Only then can you begin."

Kael tried to sit up, but his body didn't respond. He fell to his knees, and Asha ran to support him. His skin was already cold. Like stone. Like a living statue.

"Kael..." she whispered.

He looked up. He found it difficult to speak.

"Don't let me... fade away... without you."

The old woman watched them in silence. Then she nodded, as if something had become clear.

"The obsidian heart also has a price. But there is still time. If she chooses well."

Asha closed her eyes. She felt the pulse of the shard. She felt the web. She felt that the fire didn't want to be a weapon. It wanted to be language. And she... must learn to speak it.

"I'm ready," she said.

And the room was filled with a deep warmth, as if the mountains themselves were breathing for the first time in centuries. The revolution would not rise with shouts. It would begin with whispering ashes. Again.