CHAPTER 204: "THE SUMMONING OF THE FALLEN FLAME."

The witch inclined her hooded head. "Then you’ll need more than this relic. More than spells. More than conventional power."

"What do I need?"

The scarred hand opened the black book. Pages rustled, ancient and fragile, covered in text that seemed to writhe in the firelight.

"Knowledge," the witch said. "Preparation. And a willingness to use methods that even Pyronox himself would condemn."

Vetra’s smile returned. Cold. Sharp. Absolutely merciless.

"Then let’s begin."

Outside, snow began to fall. Soft. Silent. Covering the palace grounds in fresh white that would be beautiful by morning.

Inside Vetra’s chambers, three women bent over a black book covered in ancient symbols.

Planning.

Plotting.

Preparing to unleash something that should have stayed buried.

Deep into the night, when even the palace guards had retreated to warmer halls and the servants had long since extinguished the lesser torches, Vetra’s private chamber breathed with a darkness that had nothing to do with the absence of light.

The room she dedicated to activities such as this itself seemed to recoil from what transpired within it.

Three figures bent over an ancient tome, their shadows stretching long and distorted across walls carved from ice so old it had forgotten how to reflect. Candles burned in unnatural colors, white flames that cast no warmth, green tongues that hissed and spat, purple light that made the skin appear corpse-like.

Vetra Helena Nivarre, Regent Empress, stood at the head of the table with the posture of a woman conducting a symphony. Her silver hair gleamed like frost under moonlight, her expression serene, almost meditative, as though searching through forbidden texts for ways to unmake a kingdom was no different from selecting embroidery patterns.

Beside her, Aira, the witch named herself turned pages with fingers gnarled and scarred, each movement deliberate, reverent. The burns that covered her from head to toe screaming their story, a tale of fire and failure, of a queen who had survived an assassination attempt and left her attackers as ash. The scars pulled tight when she moved, a constant reminder of divine retribution.

And there, hovering at the edges like a ghost uncertain of its haunting, stood Lady Isolde Ravencrest. Her face still bore the faint shadow of bruising where Eris’s hand had struck, a mark she would possibly try to conceal with powder and pride. She watched with eyes that couldn’t quite decide between horror and fascination, a moth circling a flame that had already burned others.

On the table between them lay the black book, containing dark spells, bound in leather that might once have been skin. Its pages whispered when turned, secrets spilling into air too cold to hold them.

And beside it, the bone compass, needle trembling as it pointed unerringly toward the distant wing where Eris was, unaware that her presence disturbed the instruments of the dead.

"This one," Aira murmured, her voice like gravel scraping glass. She read aloud in a tongue that predated time, syllables that tasted of smoke and sulfur. "The Binding of flaming Hearts. Requires three days of preparation and the subject’s blood."

Vetra’s lips pressed into a thin line. "Too slow."

Another page turned, parchment crackling like old bones.

"The Plague of the Black flame," Aira continued. "Victims suffocate slowly, their breath turning to smoke."

"Too obvious." Vetra’s fingers drummed once against the table. "The court physicians would trace it back to sorcery within hours."

Isolde shifted her weight, the movement drawing Vetra’s glacial attention. The younger woman stilled immediately, remembering her place, remembering that she was here by sufferance, that Vetra’s mercy extended only as far as her usefulness.

More pages. More ancient horrors catalogued in careful script.

"The Summoning of the flame Riders. Brings forth—"

"Not devastating enough," Vetra interrupted, impatience finally coloring her tone. "I don’t want whispers of plague or quiet deaths in the night. I want chaos. I want the kind of destruction that makes the history books, that forces Soren’s hand, that proves beyond doubt that the fire-blooded witch he’s brought into our empire is exactly the monster I’ve been warning about."

The witch’s scarred lips curved, an expression that might have been a smile on someone whose face remembered how. Her fingers, twisted like roots, traced over the next page, then stopped.

Silence fell, heavier than before.

Even the unnatural candles seemed to dim, as though the flames themselves feared what came next.

"Here," Aira whispered, and there was something in her voice now, something that made Isolde take an involuntary step back. "The Summoning of the Fallen Flame."

Vetra leaned forward, reading over the witch’s shoulder. The text was written in script so old it predated the dragons themselves, back when the first fires learned to think, to hunger, to hate.

"What does it do?" Vetra’s voice had gone soft, the way ice grows quiet before it cracks.

Aira’s finger traced the words, translating as she went. "It breaks the seal holding the condemned beneath the earth. Ifrit, the fire demons, Pyronox’s first children before they fell from grace. They were bound millennia ago, during the Age of Gods, sealed beneath Solmire’s volcanic core after they fueled the crack between humans."

"Fire demons," Vetra repeated, tasting the words. "In my empire of ice."

"The irony," Aira agreed, "will be lost on no one. The spell tears open the earth itself, allows the Zahkar to crawl up from their prison. They don’t rampage mindlessly, they’re too intelligent for that. They remember their purpose, to judge, to punish, to turn flesh to ash."

"And they would be blamed on Eris." Understanding dawned in Vetra’s eyes, cold and beautiful as winter stars. "The fire queen brings fire demons. How... poetic."

Isolde’s voice emerged thin and wavering. "Your Grace, surely there must be risks, if the spell is so powerful, why was it forbidden?"

Both women turned to look at her, and Isolde felt the weight of their combined attention like ice water down her spine.

"Because," Aira said slowly, as though explaining something to a particularly slow child, "it is irreversible once begun. The demons will not stop, will not return willingly. They must be sealed again by someone with divine power, or they will burn until there is nothing left to burn."

"Good," Vetra said simply.

Isolde blanched. "But, Your Grace, innocent people would die, your people, the citizens of Nevareth..."

"A few more sacrifices," Vetra’s tone suggested she was discussing politics, "for the greater good. I’d like to see Eris try to save them with that unstable power of hers. Let everyone see what happens when she inevitably loses control, when the dragon inside her breaks free and burns everything she touches. Soren will watch his precious fire queen become exactly what I’ve warned him about."