(Set between "Ashes of the First Flame" and "Embers of Penance")
The prison wasn’t made of stone.
It was made of silence.
Time hung thick in the glade—an amber hush where breath dared not linger. The trees here twisted away from the center, as if ashamed to witness. Thorned vines hummed with latent judgment. The air shimmered with the memory of light, but offered none.
And at the heart of it, she waited.
Bound in threads spun from radiance and regret.
She did not slumber. Slumber was a kindness. She merely endured.
Her wings, once born of stolen sunrise, drooped in reverent disrepair. Her eyes—still open—reflected nothing but distance.
She felt the shift before it arrived.
Something in the glade recoiled.
Iridesseth stepped through the fold in the world, barefoot and burning. Her antlers curled with molten stillness, her expression unreadable. Where she walked, petals bloomed and blackened in the same breath.
The figure in the web of radiant bindings did not move. But her voice cut cleanly through the hush.
“So they remembered me.”
Iridesseth stopped at the edge of the lattice. “They remembered him.”
A pause. Then—soft laughter. “Of course they did. He never stays buried.”
“He remembers his name.”
That drew a reaction. A flicker. A shiver in the bindings. Not fear. Not yet.
“Has he spoken it?”
Iridesseth shook her head. “Not aloud. But it moves in him now. Beneath the skin. Beneath the fire.”
A smile touched the prisoner’s lips—crooked and glassy. “Then he’s finally waking up.”
Iridesseth’s tone was colder than flame. “He survived the forest.”
“I knew he would.”
“You hoped he would.”
The bound woman’s wings stirred. Glamour fractured along the edges. “Hope. Fear. What’s the difference when the fire is already lit?”
Iridesseth stepped closer. The air between them turned brittle. “You made him from something that was never yours.”
“I shaped what others abandoned.”
“You twisted what should have healed.”
“And you,” the prisoner murmured, “burned what should have been forgotten. Spare me your lectures.”
Iridesseth’s expression didn’t shift. Her voice became stiller. Older. “He is coming.”
A beat of silence. Then—
“Here?”
“Yes.”
The prisoner exhaled slowly. Her breath glittered with divine residue. “Will he hate me?”
Iridesseth did not answer.
Another breath. “Will he understand?”
“No,” the Keeper said. “He will remember. That is worse.”
A faint grimace. “I never wanted him to forgive me.”
“Then you may yet get what you deserve.”
The bindings pulsed. A single thread of light snapped, almost too quiet to hear.
Iridesseth stepped back, fire dimming in her bones. “He carries judgment now. Not the kind born of wrath… but of choice.”
The prisoner’s eyes closed for the first time in an age. “He was always beautiful when choosing the fire.”
The Keeper said nothing.
As she turned to leave, the air folded around her like mourning silk.
From within the glade, a final question chased her:
“If he asks me why…”
Iridesseth’s voice came like a whisper inside a wound.
