To wear the crown is not to rule, but to remember every cut it left behind.
One week after the Vote of Flame, Kael stands atop the Ashen Bastion, now restored as the command post of the Warden of Remembrance.
Draped in a cloak of fire-stitched threads, he surveys the Flameguard — a legion of warriors clad in black-and-bronze armor inscribed with runes that glow only when they recall their deepest memories.
The Flameguard don't swear oaths to a crown.
They swear to memory.
"We don't fight for thrones," Kael says, "We fight for the truth they buried under a thousand lies."
Kael's first mission: reclaim Thornsreach, a fortress once known as the Citadel of Eternal Bloom, before it was twisted into a nest of thornsteel by the Crownless.
To reach Thornsreach, Kael's company must cross the Bloodbloom Forest, an ancient woodland warped by residual godfire from the Sundering.
Lia rides beside him, now wielding a soulbound glaive passed down through her maternal line: the Glint of Haleth. The weapon whispers to her in broken dreams, warning of coming betrayal.
"You think this forest is cursed?" she asks.
"No," Kael says. "It's remembering the last war. And it's angry we've forgotten."
The trees bleed mist. The vines whisper names no one living remembers. Flameguard scouts vanish — pulled into hollows between time, where their ancestors scream at them to run.
Elien, recovering from her battle with the memorykiller, meets them at the forest's heart. She carries with her an ancient scroll — the Tesserant Sigil, once used to anchor space during godflame incursions.
"You'll need this," she says. "Because Thornsreach isn't where you remember it being."
When Kael and the Flameguard arrive, they find Thornsreach overgrown with a massive thornsteel crown — a lattice of living metal that pulses with raw memory energy.
Inside: hundreds of Crownless soldiers, led by a flame-echo known as Velkyr of the Thorned Path, a former paladin turned heretic, who once swore fealty to the gods… and then burned their temple down.
Kael proposes a swift assault — but the Crownless anticipate it. Velkyr sets traps, using echoes of Kael's past lives as weapons.
Spectral images of Kael murdering innocents.
Visions of Kael wearing the true Bone Crown.
Memories not his — or are they?
"You see now?" Velkyr sneers from the battlements. "You're not a savior. You're what started this war in the first place."
Kael wavers. The Flameguard falter. Lia is injured in the fray.
Then a voice, deep and metallic, rises from beneath the fortress.
"Come down, Vaelorian. Come and see what your memory has made."
In the heart of the fortress, Kael finds a throne of thorns, impaling a living fragment of the Bone Crown.
The fragment takes the form of a boy — no older than Kael — but with eyes of pure flame and a voice that splits memory.
"I remember you. I remember being you."
"We are not broken. We are shattered. And every piece wants something different."
The boy, calling himself Thorne, offers Kael a bargain:
Unite the fragments, and Kael can restore the Bone Crown — to end the war in one devastating flame.
Or scatter them forever, and condemn the world to eternal forgetting.
Kael asks, "Which do you want?"
"I want to remember… but I'm afraid of what we'll see."
Kael touches Thorne's hand.
A vision floods in — a memory of Kael standing in the ruins of a golden city, the Bone Crown on his head, flame raining from the sky, gods screaming, Lia lying dead at his feet.
"This is your future," Thorne says. "Or your past. We've looped too many times to know."
Kael pulls back, shivering.
"I won't be your vessel," he says. "But I won't abandon you either."
He channels the Ash Lens, revealing that the thornsteel crown itself was forged from the spines of a dead god, once loyal to the Vaelorian line.
Kael reclaims the crown — not to wear it, but to bind it.
Using Thorne's memory, Elien's sigils, and Lia's blood-forged oath, Kael performs the first Crownbinding Ritual in centuries:
"Let this memory burn bright and not break.
Let this shard remember and not rule.
Let fire be truth — not tyranny."
The fortress collapses. The Crownless are scattered. Velkyr is consumed in backlash flame.
Thornsreach is reclaimed — not for a king, but for Remembrance.
News spreads.
Kael Vaelorian has bound a Crown Fragment.
Noble families begin to panic. Some seek alliance. Others prepare for war.
And in the shadows of Nightspire, a god awakes.
"He wears no crown," the god whispers. "But he has taken my son's flame."
"It is time I reclaimed it."