Chapter 2 The Ashen Path
The rain had turned to mist by dawn.
Erevale’s skyline burned faintly gold where the first sunlight pierced through the smog like the heavens themselves were bleeding.
Lyra sat beneath the overpass, shivering in her torn coat, her hands still faintly aglow beneath the grime. Every nerve in her body hummed with power she didn’t understand. When she closed her eyes, she could still feel the fire coiled in her veins like a heartbeat that wasn’t hers.
She hadn’t slept. Couldn’t. The images wouldn’t fade Kael’s face in the firelight, the soldiers’ screams, the city melting around her. She’d always dreamed of escaping the slums, but not like this.
The voice inside her stirred again, soft as smoke.
“You cannot stay here, child of flame. They have marked your essence.”
“Stop calling me that,” she muttered. “I’m not your child.”
“Yet your soul carries my blood. You are dragonkind reborn. Your fire is the last echo of the divine.”
Lyra pressed her palms to her ears as if she could silence it. “Leave me alone.”
“You awakened me, Lyra Veyne. You can no longer unmake what you are.”
She opened her eyes and the voice vanished, leaving behind an ache that wasn’t entirely fear. Somewhere deep down, part of her wanted to believe it. To believe there was something more to her life than selling potions to dying men.
But then she looked at her hands the same hands that had killed a squad of people and the thought turned to ash.
A sudden sound cut through the quiet: the whine of engines overhead. Drones, sweeping the area. Lyra’s pulse spiked. She slipped out from under the overpass and into the maze of alleys, keeping to the shadows. Her boots splashed through puddles reflecting flickers of gold from the fires still smoldering in the distance.
She had one thought: find somewhere to hide.
The Old Quarter lay at the edge of the city, where the towers of glass gave way to stone temples long abandoned. Once, the Order had called this place sacred. Now it was a graveyard of forgotten gods.
Lyra ducked into a half-collapsed shrine, its walls covered in faded runes. At its center stood a cracked statue of a dragon wings half-broken, eyes hollow. She almost laughed at the irony.
“Guess this is your idea of home, huh?” she whispered to the emptiness.
“Close enough,” said a voice behind her.
Lyra spun, flames flaring from her palms before she could stop them. The light revealed Kael leaning against the doorway, his coat scorched, his expression unreadable.
“You again.” She took a step back, fire pulsing at her fingertips. “I told you not to follow me.”
“Then you’ll have to burn me again,” he said. “But you won’t.”
Her flames flickered, uncertain. “You think you know me?”
“I know what it’s like to wake up with something inside you that doesn’t belong,” he said quietly. “Something ancient. Hungry. The first time my curse bled through, I nearly killed my entire unit.”
She hesitated, watching him. His voice carried no threat only exhaustion.
“What do you want, Kael?”
“To keep you alive,” he said simply. “There’s someone you need to meet.”
“I’m done trusting strangers.”
“Then think of him as a legend instead.” Kael’s lips twisted in a faint smile. “They call him Elder Orin. He’s the last of the True Cultivators. If anyone can help you control that fire, it’s him.”
Lyra frowned. “Cultivators? Those were stories from before the Machine War. They don’t exist.”
“They do,” Kael said. “The Order just erased them.”
The air between them felt heavy, charged with something unspoken. Lyra finally sighed. “If this is another trap ”
“It isn’t,” he said. “But if you stay here, they’ll find you before nightfall.”
She looked once more at the shattered dragon statue, then nodded. “Fine. Lead the way.”
They moved through the ruins until the streets gave way to tunnels old subway lines sealed decades ago. The deeper they went, the warmer the air grew, like the city’s heart still pulsed beneath its metal skin.
Kael carried a lantern carved with runes that shimmered blue in the dark. Lyra followed, the glow of her fire reflecting off the damp walls.
“So who is this Orin?” she asked.
“He was a high monk of the Ember Sect, before the Ascendants burned it down. The legends say he mastered the Ashen Path the cultivation of soul through sorrow. They say he survived the fall by binding his spirit to the dragon flame itself.”
Lyra arched a brow. “You sound like you believe that.”
“I’ve seen things the Order hides. The heavens burned once before. You’re proof they can again.”
They reached a chamber carved from obsidian. At its center stood an old man, cross-legged, surrounded by floating shards of crystal that pulsed with ember light. His eyes were closed, his breath shallow but steady.
When he spoke, his voice echoed through the chamber like the crackle of distant fire.
“You bring the awakened one.”
Kael bowed slightly. “Elder Orin.”
Lyra stiffened. “I didn’t agree to any ceremony.”
The old man’s eyes opened glowing faintly amber. “So the flame has chosen at last. Come closer, child.”
Lyra hesitated. “I’m not your child. And I’m not whatever you think I am.”
“Denial is the first chain you must burn,” Orin said. “Tell me, do you still hear it?”
“The voice?” she asked quietly. “Yes. It won’t stop.”
“That is the memory of Aetherion,” he said. “The last of the true dragons, slain when the heavens were forged. His soul seeks rebirth through you.”
Lyra felt the ground tilt beneath her. “Why me?”
“Because your mother hid the flame in you. She was my disciple once, before the war. She swore never to let the Order claim it.”
Lyra’s breath caught. “You knew my mother?”
Orin nodded. “She walked the Ashen Path and paid its price.”
“What price?”
He looked at her with eyes that had seen centuries. “To cultivate through fire is to destroy what you love. Every step burns away a part of the heart until only the flame remains. That is the path of your blood.”
Lyra took a step back, shaking her head. “No. I don’t want this.”
“You already carry it,” Orin said softly. “The heavens marked you long before you were born.”
Kael’s voice cut in gently. “She doesn’t need prophecy right now. She needs control.”
Orin regarded him for a long moment, then nodded. “Very well. The first lesson, then.”
He raised his hand. The air thickened, shimmering with heat. “Close your eyes, child of flame. Feel the ember beneath your ribs. Do not fight it. Listen.”
Lyra hesitated, then obeyed. She inhaled slowly. The air tasted of ash and metal.
She felt the fire stir inside her chest—wild, alive, ancient. It whispered in a thousand forgotten tongues. When she focused, it shaped itself into words.
“Remember what was taken from us. Remember the sky that once belonged to dragons.”
Her heart pounded. Images flashed behind her eyelids: vast golden wings blotting out the sun, a world of floating citadels, oceans of flame. Then came the fall chains of light, gods in armor, dragons burning as the heavens collapsed.
Lyra gasped and opened her eyes. The chamber spun around her. “I saw it… the war. The real one.”
Orin nodded. “And now you understand. The heavens were not created by gods, but stolen from dragons. The Order builds its empire on their bones.”
Lyra’s hands clenched. “Then I’ll tear it down.”
The elder smiled faintly. “You will try. And for that, you will need the Ashen Heart.”
“The what?”
“The core of your flame,” Orin said. “To find it, you must walk through your own destruction and survive it.”
Kael frowned. “You can’t mean”
“I do,” Orin said. “Every true cultivator is reborn in their own fire.”
Lyra looked down at her trembling hands, at the faint glow beneath her skin. Somewhere deep inside, the flame pulsed like it understood.
“I’m not ready.”
“No one ever is,” Orin said. “But the heavens will not wait.”
That night, as she sat in the quiet chamber with the echoes of Orin’s words still burning in her mind, Lyra realized the truth:
Her life in the slums had already ended. What came next would either forge her or consume her.
And as the fire whispered again from within, she no longer knew which she feared more.
