Location: A sanctum beyond dawn, where time does not pass—it remembers.
The chamber gleamed with stillness. No shadows, no sound beyond the breath of the cosmos itself. Light here was not cast—it emanated. A place not built, but forgiven into being.
Sarenrae knelt at its heart.
The Dawnflower, radiant and sorrowful, held her hands over a basin of liquid light. It rippled not with motion, but with memory. Reflected in its surface: the flicker of desert flame, the echo of footsteps through ash, and two figures walking together—Engondral, who the world calls Striker, and Lirael, the Emberbound.
Behind her, Amri'el, her consort of dusk, approached quietly. Wings sheathed in refracted twilight. His presence was reverent, yet weighted with concern.
“You summoned me,” he said.
Sarenrae nodded, her gaze never leaving the basin. “I wished to look upon the ones I let fall.”
He joined her, kneeling. Together they watched as Striker stepped into the light of morning—his horns catching the sun like broken crown-points. Lirael walked beside him, her wings gone, her presence quiet.
“You watch him often,” Amri’el observed.
“I feel him often,” she corrected. “Every time he calls my name with his flame. Every time he offers a soul—enemy or friend—to my judgment.”
Amri’el studied the water. “And now he walks beside her.”
Sarenrae's voice was soft, but edged like tempered steel. “I let her rise.”
Amri’el tilted his head. “She betrayed no law.”
“She betrayed me.” The light flared subtly around her hands. “She stood in silence when I faltered. She watched as a fey interloper stole a shard of my sorrow—a moment of mercy I could not voice. Lirael saw the theft. She named it sacred... and then said nothing.”
“And now she follows the spark that theft became.”
Sarenrae closed her eyes. “She follows not out of guilt. But grief. She believes her penance is to bear witness to what her silence birthed.”
“Is that not enough?” Amri’el asked.
“No,” she said, opening her eyes. “But it is a beginning.”
They watched in silence as Striker—Engondral—knelt beside a wounded traveler, his flaming hand offering not destruction, but warmth. Lirael stood behind him, offering no words. Only protection.
Sarenrae’s voice lowered. “He does not yet know what she was to me. That she was once the flame that judged on my behalf. That her silence was not cowardice… but mercy misguided.”
“You still love her.”
“I love what she tried to be,” Sarenrae said. “And what she might become again.”
Amri’el leaned forward, tracing a rune above the basin. “And the boy of regret—the ember?”
Sarenrae smiled faintly, but there was no joy in it.
“He is mine,” she said. “Not by blood. Not by will. But by consequence. I did not shape him—but my hesitation did. My mercy left unspoken. He is the fire that should never have walked.”
“And yet he does.”
“And yet,” she repeated, “he chooses to burn rightly. He offers flame to the lost. Light to the broken. Wrath to the irredeemable.”
Amri’el’s tone darkened with gentle caution. “He may still burn you, one day.”
“I welcome it,” Sarenrae whispered. “If my silence shaped his pain, then let his fury be the question I was too afraid to answer.”
Amri’el reached out and rested his hand over hers.
“You could appear to them.”
“I cannot,” she said. “Not yet. If I speak, they will think it permission. If I act, they will think it command.” She turned her gaze once more to the basin.
“They must choose—freely.”
A silence followed. And then:
“What if Lirael fails again?”
Sarenrae’s flame shimmered dimly—like an old wound warming.
“Then she will burn,” she said. “But this time, it will be her own fire—not mine.”
She leaned forward, pressing two fingers to the water’s surface. Ripples spread—showing the path ahead, blurred with uncertainty and pain.
“Until then,” she murmured, “let her walk in his shadow. Let her learn what fire can destroy, yes—but also what it can protect.”
She rose.
Her blade remained sheathed.
Her light, steady.
“And let him burn,” she said. “Until I am no longer ashamed of the flame he carries.”
And with that, the basin dimmed.
The chamber held its breath.
And somewhere, across desert and memory, a Watch ticked once.
