Chapter 9: Scars Of The Flameborn

The Well had gone silent.

Beyond the Academy’s stone walls, the world spun on darker threads. The Empire of Eiras kept order through its ruling caste, the Houses of Flame, Frost, and Void—each guarding an ancient source of mana, each vying for influence over the throne’s successor. Rumors whispered of schisms among them, of secret pacts with monsters once thought forgotten.

Not dead — not empty — just… silent. Like it had exhaled every secret it was willing to share, and now waited.

Kaen sat near its edge, knees drawn up, arms resting loosely, the scent of scorched stone still clinging to his clothes.

The name still echoed in his mind.

It didn't feel foreign.

It felt buried.

Reiji leaned against a fractured pillar, arms crossed, watching Kaen with quiet wariness.

Shigure stood near the far wall, examining the runes in silence — not reading them, but remembering them.

She had seen this place before.

Not with her eyes, perhaps.

But in training. In dreams. In warnings.

"So," Reiji finally said, "that thing… that voice. It knew your name."

"That wasn't just Māna," Reiji pressed. "It knew you."

"I don't want to talk about it," Kaen said, voice low.

The silence that followed was heavier than any argument.

Reiji frowned, not angry — not yet — but visibly shaken.

"You nearly lit yourself on fire, Kaen. Again. And then you started glowing. I think we deserve some answers."

"You'll get them when I have them," Kaen replied.

"Right I'm as lost as you."

Shigure stepped forward, her voice calm but firm.

"You're not lost. You're waking up."

Kaen looked up, eyes sharp.

"Waking up to what?"

"To what you are. What you were meant to be."

Reiji scoffed.

"You're both speaking in riddles again. Just say it — what is he?"

"A scar," Shigure said.

"A living reminder of something the world tried to erase."

The words hit Kaen harder than he expected.

He wasn't just a weapon.

He wasn't just bloodlines and fire.

He was a wound.

"Is that all I am?" he asked bitterly.

"No," she said. "But it's where you start."

She turned to the runes on the wall.

"This temple was built to guard the flame that shapes as much as it scorches. Not from the world — for the world. But the world feared it. So they called it cursed. Hollow. Dangerous. Just like they'll call you."

Kaen's eyes flicked to Reiji.

The silence between them widened.

He could feel it — the distance.

Not hatred.

But fear.

And that was worse.

Shigure continued:

"We'll need to move. The Hollow Woken will reform, and more will come. Especially now that the Rift has seen you."

"Let it watch," Kaen muttered.

"It already is."

Kaen stood, the echo of the name still burning behind his ribs.

Not just Kaen.

"Then let it remember what fire looks like."

Far away — beyond the mountains, beyond the mist — a figure sat in a sunless chamber, skin pale as bone, eyes like ancient obsidian.

A wampir.

One of the Eldest.

Smiling.

"He burns again."

"Then let the hunt begin."

Far north, where moonlight never touched the stone, beneath a fortress carved into a mountain's heart — silence reigned.

And in that silence, blood moved.

Not through veins.

Through memory.

The chamber was lit only by a brazier of violet flame. Shadows danced like living things across black-marble walls etched with the sigils of an ancient bloodline.

Ten chairs circled the room. Only three were filled.

House Vel'shari was once one of the three great noble families aligned with the old flame cults. Their sigil—an inverted torch over waves—still adorned ruins in the Riftlands. Whispers among scholars suggested they were the first to attempt sealing a god in living flesh.

Only three were ever needed.

The voice came first.

Cold. Controlled.

Older than names.

"It stirs again."

A second voice, rough like gravel scraped through silk, responded:

"We buried it."

The third voice laughed — soft and strange.

"You don't bury fire. You feed it."

The first figure stood.

A man, tall and thin, dressed in robes darker than night. His skin glowed faintly, almost translucent, like frost over flesh. His eyes shimmered — not with light, but with absence.

"Kaen no Enjin," he said slowly, tasting the name like venom.

"The child lives."

The second figure clenched his clawed hand.

"Then Asuka failed."

"She died protecting him," the third murmured.

"Which is almost the same."

The first leaned closer to the flame that shapes as much as it scorches.

"Then she, too, is a traitor."

"She always was," said the second.

"The moment she let herself love a human."

Then the first raised his hand.

A scroll, sealed in wax with a broken sigil, appeared in the air before him.

He held it to the fire.

"Send word. To the Spires, to the Bleeding Vale, to every dark ridge of Tsukihara. Let the old ones know."

He smiled.

"The Flameborn walks."

Meanwhile, Kaen and the others had reached the edge of the basin.

The mist had thinned, but a coldness lingered — not in the air, but in the soul. Like something had been watching since the temple.

Kaen said nothing as they made camp near a small outcropping. Reiji started the fire, while Shigure remained unusually quiet.

Night fell in restless pieces.

Kaen sat apart, staring into the flame that shapes as much as it scorchess again.

They didn't answer.

But something did.

A whisper.

Soft. Familiar.

"…Kaen."

He turned sharply — but saw no one.

Only the flicker of firelight against stone.

Then — in the shadows — a figure.

Not fully formed.

A woman, her features blurred, as if made of smoke and fading stars.

Her voice was not spoken aloud.

It sang in his blood.

"The blood remembers that remembered the pain and forged the will what the mind forgets."

"Find the place where I fell."

"And you will find what they tried to steal."

"Mother…?"

But the vision was already gone.

Only the fire remained.

Only the whispers.

And in the fortress of the vampires, the first figure opened his eyes.

"The blood sings," he murmured.

"And so we hunt."

The wind shifted as dawn crept across the basin.

No birds sang. No beasts stirred. Only the dry breath of stone and ash moved around them — and a silence Kaen couldn't ignore.

Not truly.

The voice still lingered.

Mistral, the blind sage of the Forge, once told them: 'Flame is not a tool. It’s a mirror. It doesn’t kill or protect. It reflects your truth, and dares you to face it.'

The image of the woman in smoke.

The words she'd left behind.

Reiji yawned and packed up the last of his gear.

"You look like you haven't blinked in six hours."

Kaen gave a dry nod.

"Didn't feel like sleeping."

"That flame of yours talk in your dreams again?"

"Not dreams," Kaen said, glancing toward the mist-covered ridges.

"Memories. Someone else's."

Shigure stepped beside him, her cloak pulled tightly against the wind.

"The vision you saw. You think it was her."

Kaen didn't need to ask who she meant.

"And the place she mentioned?"

"We're going there."

"You know where it is?"

Kaen nodded slowly.

"Not exactly. But I can feel it. Like the Māna itself is pulling me."

Shigure looked toward the north, her expression unreadable.

"There is a place," she said. "Beyond the Blight Scar. A ruin swallowed by stone and silence. We called it Enrai's Fall. No one returns from there."

"Sounds charming," Reiji muttered.

"That's where she fell," Kaen said with quiet certainty.

"I know it."

They began the climb toward the cliffs — higher, rougher terrain where roots snapped like bones underfoot, and blackened vines strangled what remained of trees.

The closer they got, the heavier the air became.

Like the sky itself didn't want them there.

At midday, they reached the first ridge. Below it stretched a barren gorge — and in its heart, half-sunken in stone, the shattered remains of a tower.

Dark red moss clung to the rocks.

Ash coated the ground in places too thick for wind to explain.

Kaen stepped down first.

The moment his boots touched the ash, his mark pulsed.

It was here.

She fought here.

She died here.

He didn't need the voice to tell him.

The ground knew him.

The stone trembled beneath his presence.

Shigure knelt by a piece of shattered armor embedded in the earth — its design foreign, its surface scorched.

"This isn't human," she said.

Kaen moved closer. He touched the edge — and fire sparked.

The briefest glimpse:

— Asuka, cloaked in crimson, holding back a wave of Hollow with her bare hands.

— Her teeth bared.

— Her eyes burning.

— A child wrapped in her arms, hidden behind a collapsed wall.

"Stay, Kaen. Stay hidden."

Kaen stumbled back.

Reiji caught him.

"Her."

Kaen looked around.

"She fought them here. All of them."

He turned, eyes scanning the stones — and stopped.

There, beneath a broken stone altar, lay something buried in ash.

A chain. Half-rusted.

A medallion, twisted.

And beside it — a book, its pages burned, but the cover intact.

Worn leather.

One word.

Written in ink that had turned the color of dried blood:

"Enjin."

Kaen's hand trembled as he reached for it.

Shigure stepped forward quickly.

"Wait—!"

His fingers touched the book.

And the world broke open.

The moment Kaen's hand closed around the charred book, the air around him shifted.

Not just wind — time.

It folded inward, wrapped around his chest, and dragged him under.

His vision blurred.

Ash became smoke.

Stone became sky.

He was there.

Not in body.

But in memory.

The battlefield was a ruin of flame and broken sigils. The shattered tower behind him bled Māna like a wound that would never close.

Before him stood Asuka.

And burning.

She was not beautiful in that moment — not delicate or cold or regal like the stories whispered of vampire kind.

She was terrifying.

Eyes like wildfire. Blood on her lips. Her cloak torn, exposing pale skin marked with seals he didn't understand.

She held a blade not of steel — but flame itself.

And she faced them.

Three vampires.

Three of her own.

"You should not have come here, sister," said the one in the middle — the tall one, face hidden beneath a veil of smoke.

"You should not have loved."

Asuka stood her ground.

"I bore no shame in love. But you—" she spat— "you wear fear like a crown."

"You broke the covenant," said another. "Tainted your blood with his."

"I gave birth to something stronger than you ever dared to be," Asuka replied.

[Kaen's Thought] Kaen's heart thundered in his chest.

Even though he couldn't move, couldn't speak — he felt everything.

The heat. The sorrow. The certainty.

Asuka lifted her blade.

"You will not touch him."

"You think you can stop us?" hissed the veiled one.

"You're alone."

She smiled then — the saddest smile Kaen had ever seen.

"I was never alone."

And the flame that shapes as much as it scorches in her blade erupted.

What followed was not a battle.

It was a massacre.

Asuka moved like fire given form — raw, instinctive, and relentless. Her strikes didn't just cut — they consumed.

Two of the Eldest fell screaming, burned from within by flame that remembered shame.

But the last one — the veiled one — endured.

And struck.

A blade of shadow pierced her side.

Asuka fell to one knee.

Blood spilled.

But she didn't scream.

She didn't beg.

She turned her eyes toward the broken wall behind her — where a single ember still glowed.

"Run," she whispered.

The veiled one approached.

"He'll never know what you gave him."

"He doesn't need to," Asuka breathed.

"And your name?" the voice sneered. "What of it?"

She looked up with defiance burning in her dying breath.

"Let it burn with me."

The world fractured.

And Kaen gasped as he was pulled back.

He was kneeling in the ruin again.

The book still in his hand.

The mark on his chest pulsing wildly.

Reiji stood frozen nearby.

"Kaen?"

Kaen looked up, eyes wet, throat tight.

"She fought them alone."

"She killed two."

"She… saved me."

Shigure approached, kneeling beside him.

"You saw it."

"All of it," Kaen whispered.

He opened the book.

Most pages were burned.

But one remained.

A name written in her hand.

Not in ink.

But in dried blood.

Not Enjin.

Not Flameborn.

Just Kaen.

The name of a son.

"She wanted me to live," he whispered.

"Not for power. Not for vengeance. Just… to live."

Reiji stood a few steps away, unsure, his expression unreadable.

"Then maybe it's time we start doing that."

Kaen closed the book gently.

Stood.

Looked north.

"Not yet."

In the fortress beneath the mountain, the veiled wampir sat still — eyes closed — and opened his hand.

Within it lay a lock of white hair.

Charred at the end.

"You've remembered her," he whispered.

"Now let's see if you remember me."

For the first time, Kaen stood in the heart of Hakuryuu-no-Shiro, the ruined castle of the White Dragon — the place that, in stories whispered by old men and drunken vagrants, had once been a beacon of dignity and strangeness. Now, the only light came from the ghostly blue gleam of fallen moonbeams, fractured by broken stone and a sky full of drifting ash. The past was thick in the air — not only memory but something older, more feral, like the scent of scorched incense in a temple that had not known prayer in a hundred years.

He stepped across the moss-choked flagstones, the battered signet of his house barely visible in the fractured marble beneath his feet: two gryphons entwined, wings locked, beaks poised in silent defiance. No one alive remembered what it meant. But Kaen remembered the way his hands trembled when he first saw it, etched into the sword Sayari had given him — the same crest, the same forgotten line. In this place, under the open wounds of the heavens, the symbol seemed to pulse with half-remembered power.

Meika stayed close, her hand always within reach of his. She was silent, far more than usual, as if every word would shatter some sacred boundary. The other half-bloods — those dumped here by the cruelty of Reijuu's clique — clustered at the outer edges, looking for some escape, some logic, even some blame. None found it. Even Setzu, so quick to fight and laugh, stood back, face pinched with a rare kind of fear.

Every ruin told a story. This one spoke in smoke and silence.

Kaen forced himself forward, boots scraping against old bloodstains hidden by time. The grand hall was not a hall anymore; it was a cathedral of ruin, beams snapped like bones, a blackened chandelier hanging by one desperate chain. He passed what must once have been the family altar. Ashes, broken icons, shattered remnants of offerings — and beneath, the faded impression of a hand, small and delicate, burned into the stone.

A memory brushed him: a woman singing, her voice like snow, and a silver-haired man — laughing, alive — spinning her through a rain of falling petals. It wasn't real, it couldn't be real. But the pain was. Kaen paused, one hand on the altar, breath coming hard. The world spun. For a moment, he wanted to run, to vomit, to leave all this behind. But something, some thread deep inside, pulled him on.

"Kaen…" Meika's voice, so soft he almost missed it. She squeezed his hand, eyes wide with concern. "You don't have to do this alone."

He managed a half-smile. "I know. But I think… I think it wants me to remember."

The others watched him, some with confusion, others with that wary awe reserved for anyone who stood at the edge of legend. Setzu knelt beside a broken column, tracing runes with her finger, her lips moving in a half-remembered prayer. Someone sobbed in the background — a boy too young for the world's cruelty.

The wind changed. In the silence, something cold brushed Kaen's cheek — not wind, not dust. A presence. The ruined hall thickened, the blue moonlight flaring, shadows twisting, walls drawing closer. A scent like burnt flowers.

He blinked. In the center of the room, a figure appeared: a woman in a white dress, blood blooming across her chest, hair like silver fire, eyes too bright to be human. She was beautiful, terrible — and impossibly familiar.

"Kaen," she said, and her voice was both thunder and lullaby. "You came home."

His heart stuttered. "Who… who are you?"

But he already knew. He felt it in the marrow of his bones, in the pain that had haunted his sleep for years. She smiled, a sorrow deeper than any grave. "You are my son," she whispered. "My only light. My ruin, and my hope."

Meika gasped, stepping back. Setzu rose, wary, ready to shield Kaen, but the spirit barely seemed to see them. Only Kaen.

"You don't remember me," the woman said softly, not a question but a truth. "I gave everything to keep you alive. To keep him —" her voice faltered, "— to keep your father's line from burning out. But this place… this place remembers that remembered the pain and forged the will. And so do you. That's why you hurt."

[Kaen's Thought] Kaen felt tears spill down his cheeks — shameful, angry, but impossible to stop. "Why did you leave me? Why do I only find you like this?"

She touched his cheek, fingers as cold as midnight rain, but full of impossible love. "Because the world would have killed you for who you are. Because I had to become a monster, so you could live as a boy. You are more than them, Kaen. You carry blood that frightens kings and breaks curses. Never forget it."

He tried to speak, but the words tangled on grief. The spirit — his mother, Shinoa — pressed a kiss to his brow, leaving a mark of blood and light.

"Live," she whispered. "Not as a ghost, not as a shadow, but as my son. As yourself. And when the time comes, come find me."

The vision wavered. The ruin grew cold, shadows melting away, moonlight burning white. Meika caught him as his knees buckled, and together they knelt at the place where love and death had crossed.

In the silence, only the heartbeat of the world — and the memory of a name — remained.

It took Kaen a long while to stand up. The ruin, once suffocating in its silence, now pulsed with a strange, fragile calm — as if some invisible wound had closed, but left the scar burning. Meika held him for a long moment, arms firm around his shoulders, saying nothing. She knew the way grief gnaws a soul, how it leaves words useless. Around them, the others shifted uneasily, some whispering, some openly weeping. No one asked what Kaen had seen. No one needed to.

Setzu was first to break the spell. She knelt beside Kaen, her eyes fierce but wet, and pressed her palm against the back of his neck — not to comfort, but to anchor him in the now. "You're not alone. Not ever," she said. "No matter what you saw. Not ever."

Kaen nodded, the memory of his mother's touch still vivid on his brow. He tried to summon anger, to bury the pain beneath it, but only exhaustion remained. There was no anger left for the world; only a kind of bone-deep resolve.

"We need to get out of here," Meika whispered, glancing toward the cracked archway that had once been the grand entrance. The air was colder, the moon higher — dawn was not far. "Before someone comes looking. Before… before the rest find us."

Kaen looked back one last time. The altar gleamed in the dying moonlight. He felt a silent promise settle in his chest, heavy as iron: whatever he became, whatever the world forced him to be, he would not let this place — or her memory — be forgotten.

They moved quietly, helping the younger half-bloods who were still in shock. Kaen noticed how, in the aftermath of what happened, the lines between them had blurred — demon, human, elf, half-blood — all just children in the ruin of something greater than themselves. For a few moments, there was no division, only shared survival.

At the broken gates, the magic that had sealed them in flickered and died. Setzu, grinning through tears, punched Meika's shoulder. "Told you nothing could hold us if we didn't let it."

Meika rolled her eyes but smiled — tired, wary, but real. She glanced at Kaen, who was still staring at his hands, turning them over as if looking for the secret his mother's blood had left behind. "You're shaking," she said.

"I'm not afraid," he answered quietly, more to himself than anyone else. "Not anymore. I just… I just don't know who I am."

Setzu slung an arm around his shoulder, heedless of dust and tears. "You're Kaen. That's all that matters. Anyone who says otherwise can fight me."

Meika's smile sharpened, proud and a little bit wild. "They'll have to fight us both."

They stepped out into the night, the air sharp with the scent of cold grass and distant fire. As they walked, the others followed — not quite a procession, but something close. Children of ruin, shadows trailing them like torn banners. [Kaen's Thought] Kaen felt each footstep like a drumbeat echoing down through the centuries: not just his own, but those of every outcast who had ever called this world home.

At the edge of the ruins, Kaen paused. Something tugged at him, a whisper at the base of his skull, not words but a feeling — the certainty that he had started something that could not be undone.

Above them, the moon faded into the first hints of dawn. The world felt both smaller and infinitely larger.

They made their way down the slope toward the camp, cold dew biting through their shoes. When the tents of the Academy group came into view, the sounds of snoring and idle watchmen seemed suddenly strange — a reminder of how little the outside world cared about the secrets of broken castles and haunted bloodlines.

Reijuu and his clique were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they were still asleep, or perhaps their cruelty was more calculated than childish. Either way, the fear that had ruled Kaen's life felt… quieter now. Not gone, but changed. The old wounds were open, but the air tasted fresher, less poisoned by lies.

In the distance, a bell tolled from the direction of the Academy — a summons for the students to return, to fall back into lines, roles, masks.

Meika nudged Kaen. "Ready to go back?"

He hesitated, glancing at Setzu, then at Meika. "No," he said. "But I'm going anyway."

They smiled — all three a little broken, all three unbowed.

The path to the Academy was steep, but Kaen walked at its head. For the first time, the others followed not because they had to — but because they wanted to.

And as the sun finally climbed over the horizon, gilding the ruins with new light, Kaen whispered to the morning, "I will not forget you. I will not become what they fear. I am Kaen — nothing less, and nothing more."

The world, ancient and wounded, listened.

And somewhere, in the ashes of an old name, hope took root once more.

The wind rose, whispering through the broken windows of the inn as Kaen stared into the embers that remembered the pain and forged the will. The fire's glow painted Meika's face in flickering gold, her eyes dark and heavy with what she would not say. Night deepened outside, seeping through the cracks of Kazegane, and the world felt, for a moment, as if it hung suspended on the cusp of revelation and loss.

They had survived another day. That was all that could be said, yet the ache inside Kaen's chest had grown into something sharper, something that burned with every memory—of his father's strength, his mother's vanished embrace, Iris's warnings and gentleness. Every name was an echo, every silence a wound.

He sat with Meika in the common room, the others scattered to their own corners. Shadows crept along the walls, wavering as the flame that shapes as much as it scorchess waned. It was the quiet hour before dreams, when the city outside became only a rumor, and the pain of the day turned inward.

Meika was the first to break the silence. "Kaen… do you ever wish you could forget? Start over?" Her voice trembled, and for once, she did not try to hide it.

He looked up, searching her face. "Sometimes. But I think… even if I forgot, the world wouldn't let me go. My name would still follow me." He turned the word over in his mind—Kaen. A name given in fear and hope, a name he barely understood.

She reached out, her hand warm against his. "You're not alone, you know. No matter what the world says. I'd walk with you, even through the ashes." Her smile was thin, but fierce.

He wanted to say thank you, or I need you, or I'm afraid. Instead, he only squeezed her fingers. The silence between them was gentler not quite as empty.

Across the room, old Sayari stood by the window, her silhouette slim and resolute. She watched the city, as she always did—searching for threats, for omens, for the past she could never outpace. [Kaen's Thought] Kaen wondered if she ever slept, or if her dreams were full of the same flames that haunted his own.

Suddenly, the door banged open. A breathless boy, his clothes torn and dusty, stumbled in from the darkness. "The patrols—they're coming!" he gasped, eyes wide. "The king's men—they're searching the inns. They're looking for the outcast… the silver-haired one."

The room tensed. Meika pulled her hand away, and Sayari's gaze snapped to Kaen, sharp and protective. Outside, bootsteps began to echo through the muddy street, accompanied by the hollow ring of a bell—one, two, three chimes. The signal for curfew. The city's heart beat faster.

"We have to go," Sayari said quietly. "Now, before they get here."

Meika scrambled to gather their few things. [Kaen's Thought] Kaen hesitated only a moment, glancing back at the hearth. He had grown up here, hidden among the slums, protected by names and lies and love. Now those names were being hunted, and the past was a noose tightening around his throat.

They slipped into the alley behind the inn, sticking to the deepest shadows. Rain began to fall—thin, cold, relentless—washing the filth from the stones but not the fear from their skin. Meika clung to his arm, her body trembling not from cold but from something older and deeper.

Down twisting streets they fled, Sayari leading them with the silent certainty of a hunted animal. Behind them, torches flickered and voices called, "Silver-hair! Outcast! By order of King Tenshirou, surrender yourself!"

Kaen's breath came ragged, adrenaline and terror warring inside him. He forced himself not to look back. Names could save you, or destroy you. Tonight, his was a curse.

They darted into a ruined courtyard, sheltering beneath the overhang of a collapsed roof. Sayari pressed her back to the stone, listening. "We need to get out of Kazegane. They'll search every home by dawn."

Meika's hand found Kaen's again. Her eyes, wide in the dark, searched his face. "We'll make it. I know we will. We have to. You… you're not just an outcast, Kaen. You're—" She choked, unable to finish, tears mixing with the rain.

Kaen wiped her cheek with a gentle thumb. "I'm just Kaen. That's all I've ever been."

Sayari stepped forward, her voice low and urgent. "No. You are more than that. And you must never let them take it from you."

Above them, the clouds parted for an instant, and the moon shone down—bright and cold, the color of silver fire. [Kaen's Thought] Kaen felt something stir within him, an echo of a memory he could not name. He stood, lifting Meika to her feet, and together they slipped out into the wet, uncertain night.

They left behind the ashes of what had been—a name whispered in the darkness, and the faint hope that, somewhere beyond the city walls, there was still a future waiting to be claimed