Chapter 4 The price of containing

The cavern walls breathed. Not with air, but with memory. Every surface was covered in hardened ash that, in the light of the living lamps, seemed to shift, as if the memories of what was still vibrated beneath the gray crust.

Asha couldn't sleep.

Since the restraining ritual, Kael lay in a deep sleep, lying on a warm slab in the center of the Broken Keepers' hall. His right arm, completely encased in obsidian, no longer moved forward. But it didn't retreat either.

The stone pulsed.

Asha felt it every time she drew closer. A slow rhythm, identical to that of the shard she held in her chest. A synchronicity that, according to Ezkhar, could not be broken.

"They are linked," the old man had said. "Now you share not only memory, but destiny."

She hadn't responded. She had only lowered her gaze. Sometimes, she wished she had never touched the Heart of the Temple. Not because she didn't understand its importance. But because what she had won tore her, day by day, from herself.

That thought followed her to the training hall.

The Children of Broken Fire didn't teach with weapons or words. Their lessons were silent, carved in stone and fire. Asha knelt before a circular plaque on the floor, where Aeolina's symbol mingled with dark swirls: black ash, concentrated, solid. Compressed memory.

"She's waiting for you," Maeka said from behind her. "But she won't beg you."

Asha swallowed. She knew what was coming. She had seen what the Children did with the dark ash: they touched it, contained it... or were consumed by it.

"What happens if I don't control it?" she asked without turning around.

"Then you'll be another crack in the stone. And stone doesn't remember the weak."

Maeka's figure disappeared into the gloom.

Asha took a deep breath. She stretched out her hands. She placed them on the black ash slab.

The sensation was immediate.

A void. Cold. As if a tide were entering her chest, sweeping away emotions, thoughts, and her own memories. The memory it contained was not alien. It was wild. It wasn't ordered as in temples, nor sealed in fragments clear as amber flames. This ash came from nameless conflicts, from betrayals sealed in blood, from truths without a narrator.

Voices erupted.

Screams.

A battlefield. Storms without fire. Guardians shouting orders in forgotten languages. Warriors covered in black marks. Fire that didn't burn, but absorbed the light.

And in the midst of it all, her.

Not Asha. Another.

A woman with tanned skin, pupilless eyes, wearing the same bracelet Asha wore now. But hers burned completely. She didn't hold memories: she commanded them.

"Aeolina..." Asha whispered.

The figure turned. It looked directly at her, as if it could see her from within the memory.

And then, the pain.

Asha fell back, gasping. Her hands were bleeding. Dark ash had embedded itself in her skin. Glowing particles, like cursed embers.

Maeka appeared again.

"It's not enough to look. If you don't seal the emotion, it melts into your soul."

"Seal it how?" Asha moaned.

Maeka raised her hand, revealing a small scar on her neck.

"Giving up part of yourself."

Asha looked at her, stunned.

"You mean... to contain the dark ash, I must extinguish emotions?"

"Not extinguish. Enclose. Like when you put a flame in a glass lamp. The fire is still there. But it doesn't burn."

Asha brought her hand to her chest. The Heart shard was beating faster now. As if protesting.

"And what if I lock away too much?"

Maeka shrugged.

"Then you won't be you anymore. But you'll be useful."

He left her alone.

Asha knelt again. Her breathing was uneven. Her hands still burned, and yet she didn't stop. She knew what was expected of her. She knew she couldn't fail.

Not just for Kael. Not just for the shard.

But because if she didn't manage to contain the memories, she would eventually merge with them. Like a mirror that reflects so much, it ceases to have its own form.

She closed her eyes.

She placed her palms back on the ash.

This time, she didn't try to resist the memory.

She let it in.

The battlefield returned, but not as violent. She could see the scene more clearly. Aeolina-the woman of memory-was talking with three others. Warriors. Sages. One of them was clearly Ezkhar, young, with a gaze still unbroken by age.

"The Empire wasn't built. It was stolen," Aeolina said. "And if we don't remember that, we'll repeat it."

"Are you sure you want to divide the Heart?" Ezkhar asked in memory.

"If I don't, I'll be destroyed. I'm not interested in being worshipped. I'm interested in keeping the fire alive, even if no one remembers my name."

Asha felt a pang in her chest.

The vision faded.

When she opened her eyes, the black ashes were still beneath her hands. They didn't glow. They didn't whisper. They had surrendered.

"You did it," said a voice to her right.

It was Lirien.

"I sealed them," Asha murmured. "But to do so, I had to... lock something away inside me."

"What?"

Asha looked at her sadly.

"Fear."

Lirien watched her for a long moment, as if assessing how much of that was true, and how much a defense.

"Locking away fear doesn't make you brave. It only makes you more efficient. But that's exactly what we need now."

"A tool?"

"A living relic," Lirien corrected. "The only one capable of containing what's coming."

Asha looked at her blackened hands, still flecked with ash glinting beneath the skin. Inside, she felt a door closing.

"Not forever. But for now."

She sat up slowly.

"Then teach me how to be one," she said.

Lirien nodded.

"Tomorrow, you will go to the Valley of Noise. There is a memory sealed there. One that even the Children fear. If you can contain it, you will be ready to awaken the next node."

"And if not?" "Then the valley will swallow you, as it has so many others."

Asha didn't tremble. Not because she wasn't afraid. But because she wouldn't let it out anymore.

The flame that remembers.

The living relic.

The price of containing had already begun to be exacted.

And there were still many memories left to seal.