Embers of Discord

  The stars above Lux Arcana burned with unnatural stillness.

  Selmira stood alone in the Tower of Echoes, deep within the arcanum’s highest spire, where only the most powerful seers dared to dream. The floor beneath her was a mosaic of obsidian and ivory, pulsing faintly with scrying magic. In the center, a basin filled with twilight water shimmered like liquid glass, unmoving, yet impossibly deep.

  She didn’t seek the vision. It found her.

  It began with warmth.

  A soft flicker, like candlelight, licked at the edge of her mind. Then came the scent—familiar and comforting: ancient parchment, lavender oil, and the faintest trace of phoenix ash.

  She leaned closer to the water.

  And it changed.

  The tower shattered around her, not by storm or siege, but from within.

  She saw Lux Arcana burning.

  Not with the red chaos of battle, but with flame too orderly, too cold. Scrolls blackened on their shelves. Council seats splintered as magic writhed across them. Flames licked at the walls—not chaotic, controlled, channeled through lines of law and pride. Not a war of swords—but of ideals. Loyalty fractured along fault lines drawn with ink and silence.

  She saw witches accusing phoenixes. Wolves are turning their backs on shadowkind. The Accord questioned. Twisted. Exploited.

  And standing at the center of it all was not an enemy.

  It was Elysia.

  Not a weapon in hand, but surrounded by it.

  Surrounded by voices that once swore fealty and now demanded absolutes. Every faction pulled her in a different direction, insisting that she act for them, choose them, and prove her loyalty by forsaking someone else. Her flame flared higher, brighter, and lonelier.

  Then Selmira turned—

  And saw Ronan, standing outside the fire.

  Watching.

  Frozen.

  His face was unreadable. His eyes were dark.

  Not betraying her.

  But withholding.

  The flame surged.

  The tower cracked.

  The basin in the real world exploded.

  Selmira stumbled back, gasping, shards of dreamglass glinting at her feet. Blood trickled from her nose, unnoticed.

  “It’s not war that will break us,” she whispered into the trembling silence. “It’s the illusion that we’ve already won.”

  Outside, the celebration still echoed through the corridors of Lux Arcana—laughter, songs, the distant beat of unity.

  But above, in the Tower of Echoes, Selmira stared into what came after the firelight.

  And she knew:

  The actual threat was not an enemy at the gates.

  It was the slow-burning kindling of division… already lit.

  Cracks Beneath the Flame

  The celebration had faded into quiet embers.

  Once echoing with music and laughter, Lux Arcana’s grand corridors now held the hush of a world catching its breath. In the distance, the ceremonial flame still burned above the Crescent Hollow, casting a gentle gold glow against the high tower windows.

  Elysia stood in the council chamber alone, her fingers brushing the smooth stone rim of the Heart Sigil’s twin—an echo-crystal designed to mirror the vows made at the Oath ceremony. Her gaze was distant, fixed on the flicker of firelight playing along the walls. For now, things were still.

  But peace, she knew, was a fragile thing.

  The door creaked.

  Selmira stepped inside, her long coat half-buttoned, hair unbraided, and eyes sharp and too tired. She carried the scent of spell ash and lavender, and the residue of a vision that hadn’t entirely left her.

  Elysia turned.

  “You saw something.”

  Not a question. A certainty.

  Selmira hesitated. Then crossed the room slowly, like someone walking across cracked ice.

  “Lux Arcana. It was burning,” she said softly.

  Elysia stiffened. “From outside?”

  “From within.”

  She recounted what she saw—the orderly flames, the silent divisions, the way old friendships were pulled tight until they snapped. She spoke of wolves walking out of chambers, phoenixes tightening their control, laws bent to favor the loudest voice, and Elysia alone in the center, burning brighter and brighter until the light became unbearable.

  “And Ronan?” Elysia asked, voice barely above a breath.

  Selmira looked away.

  “He watched. He didn’t abandon you. But he didn’t stop it either.”

  The silence that followed was deep, not wounded. Not afraid. Calculating.

  Elysia turned back to the window, watching as a pair of young wolves chased one another across the courtyard, still laughing from the high of the ceremony.

  “The Oath lit a torch,” she murmured. “And now everyone wants to carry it their way.”

  Selmira stepped beside her.

  “This is a beginning, Elysia. But beginnings are when roots are weakest. If we build this unity on unspoken fractures, it will rot beneath us.”

  Elysia nodded slowly, eyes flaring gold for a heartbeat.

  “Then we reinforce it. Not with control. Not with pressure. With truth.”

  She looked at Selmira thoroughly.

  “If I drift too far into flame, pull me back. If Ronan hesitates, call him on it. If the factions begin to pull at the seams—tell me.”

  Selmira’s lips quirked faintly.

  “So I become your conscience?”

  “You already were.”

  Outside, the ceremonial flame flickered—but did not waver.

  And within the chamber, the first layer of defense against division was quietly, firmly set: not magic, not decree.

  But vigilance.

  Beneath the Polished Floor

  The council chamber shimmered with an unnatural serenity.

  Sunlight streamed through enchanted glass, casting patterns of phoenix wings and crescent moons across the marble floor. The seats around the circular table were carved from stone, older than any faction alliance, and even Lux Arcana itself. But age, Elysia knew, did not guarantee wisdom. Nor stability.

  She sat at the head of the table, reviewing scrolls of post-Accord petitions, territorial clarifications, magical access requests, and border security concerns. Every inked line was a thread pulling the Accord taut—some delicate, others fraying.

  Footsteps sounded behind her—measured, quiet, but impossible to miss.

  Dorian slipped into the chamber like a shadow beneath the sun. Midnight coat. Raven-dark hair. Eyes like still water hiding a storm.

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  “You’re early,” Elysia said without looking up.

  “You’re worried,” he replied.

  That earned him a glance.

  He crossed the room, pulled a seat near her, and spread out a folded map of the Lux Arcana territories—except this version wasn’t geographical.

  It was political.

  Names, symbols, old alliances, hidden loyalties. The kind of web only someone like Dorian—spy, strategist, vampire—would weave without detection.

  “The Oath is holding,” he said, tapping a segment marked in phoenix runes, “but barely. The public’s still riding the high. The factions, though? They’re waiting. Watching. Testing.”

  Elysia folded her hands. “So what do you suggest?”

  He met her gaze without flinching.

  “We identify pressure points.”

  He gestured to the names circled in dark ink.

  “Alira Morwyn. High Witch of the Tidebound Circle. She doesn’t trust shadowkind. She’ll push for restrictions under the guise of ritual safety.”

  “Thorne Blackwater,” he continued, pointing to a wolf sigil. “Commands respect in three packs, but he’s furious that Ronan refused to punish the southern rogues. His loyalty to the Accord is conditional.”

  “Veyna Dross,” Dorian added, his voice quieter. “Faeblood envoy. She’s clever. Too clever. Speaks in riddles and votes like a storm—unpredictable and dangerous if someone makes her feel ignored.”

  Elysia studied the map, lips pressed.

  “You want me to isolate them?”

  “No,” Dorian said. “I want you to see them. Understand where to reinforce and where to mend before a faultline becomes a break.”

  She considered that in silence. The brazier at the chamber’s center crackled softly with golden flame, casting long shadows across Dorian’s sharp features.

  “You’re suggesting we play politics like they do.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m suggesting we stop pretending we’re above it.”

  He tapped the map again—once, hard.

  “The flame you lit is beautiful. But even the brightest fire casts shadows. We need to know where those shadows fall.”

  Elysia looked at him and saw no malice—only strategy. Precision.

  “Very well,” she said at last. “We map the weaknesses. Not to manipulate. But to protect.”

  Dorian nodded. “Then we begin tonight. Quietly. I’ll gather the profiles. You choose who to trust.”

  And just like that, a new kind of defense was set into motion—not of spell or sword, but of awareness.

  The fire would hold.

  But only if they learned where it flickered first.

  Stars or Sparks

  The Lorewing of Lux Arcana lay hushed, its high arched windows fogged with the breath of twilight. The enchanted tomes slumbered on their pedestals, pages fluttering softly with the ambient pull of untold stories. Floating orbs of blue light hovered just above the floor, dimmed to a whispering glow. Here, time moved differently—measured not in hours, but in truths revealed.

  Selmira stood near the central scrying basin, arms folded, jaw tight. Her sleeves were dusted with spell residue, and the faint red line of vision-burn still traced the skin beneath her eyes. Across from her, Nyx sat on the edge of a low velvet bench, one leg curled beneath her, a star-map open across her lap.

  “We should speak,” Selmira said flatly, without preamble.

  “We are,” Nyx replied, calm and unreadable. “You’re speaking. I’m listening.”

  “Don’t play coy,” Selmira snapped. “You felt it too. The council shifting. Voices growing sharper. The fault lines beneath the Oath.”

  Nyx lifted her gaze, pale lavender eyes luminous in the low light.

  “Of course I felt it,” she said. “The stars itch when people pretend peace is permanent.”

  Selmira took a step closer.

  “Then why won’t you act? Why won’t you tell Elysia what you see?”

  Nyx gently closed the map and set it aside. When she rose, her presence filled the space, not with force but with gravity.

  “Because sometimes, intervention creates the very fracture we fear.”

  “And sometimes doing nothing is what lets it rot,” Selmira countered, voice rising. “The Accord is still green. If we don’t prune the rot now, it’ll take the whole tree down with it.”

  Nyx stepped closer, their faces only inches apart now—fire and starlight in tension.

  “You want to cut the branch before it’s even bent. You want to preempt betrayal, manipulate council currents, steer fate like it’s a cart on a road.”

  “I want to keep us from burning ourselves alive!” Selmira snapped. “You saw what I saw. The flames consuming Lux Arcana—not by war, but by division. That doesn’t fix itself.”

  Nyx’s expression didn’t change, but her voice dropped to a whisper.

  “And you think shouting ‘fire’ into a room of frightened souls won’t make them burn each other faster?”

  The silence after that was heavier than any spell.

  For a long moment, the two stood in the hush of the Lorewing—watching, breathing, deciding.

  Then Nyx stepped back, her voice gentler.

  “Elysia needs us. That’s not a question. But she doesn’t need puppeteers pulling strings behind velvet curtains. She needs witnesses. Anchors. She needs to know when to act—and when to wait.”

  Selmira’s eyes lowered, just for a heartbeat.

  “So we wait,” she said quietly.

  Nyx nodded. “For now. But we watch—every heartbeat. Every shift in the stars.”

  She placed a hand over one of the ancient tomes, and the pages fluttered open, revealing an astrological diagram pulsing with a new alignment: flame, moon, and a darkened star approaching.

  “If the moment comes… we won’t be idle.”

  Selmira didn’t smile.

  But she no longer fought the silence.

  The Thread That Would Not Burn

  Selmira didn’t sleep that night.

  She sat cross-legged on the stone floor of the Tower of Echoes, the scrying basin before her, trembled with stilled twilight. There was no incense, runes, or grounding talismans to shield her from what she might see. Tonight, she didn’t want to be protected.

  She wanted the truth.

  The visions came fast this time—no gentle drift, no slow descent. One blink and she was pulled under.

  The world unfolded in fire.

  But not the bright, golden flames of Elysia’s ceremonial blaze. This was darker. Wilder. Black and violet tongues of magic spiraled upward from the base of Lux Arcana, not consuming, infecting. They moved like smoke but pulsed like blood, threading between walls, slipping beneath doors, whispering through keyholes.

  The Council chambers. The Lorewing. Even the Heart Sigil’s echo crystal.

  Not destruction.

  Corruption.

  And at the center of it all: a thread.

  A single, glimmering strand of power, thin as spider silk, twisting lazily in the air like it belonged to no one. Selmira’s gaze followed it instinctively, vision dragging behind like a tattered sail in a gale.

  The thread wound through the highest towers, the lowest vaults… then veered downward. Past the Veil wards. Into the hollow between realms. Not abyssal, not celestial—something other. Something waiting.

  A spell uncast. A throne unclaimed. A name unsaid.

  Selmira reached for the thread in the vision, and the moment her fingers brushed it, she felt the truth:

  It wasn’t just magic.

  It was potential.

  Old. Hungry. Untouched. Not by accident—but by intention. Someone had buried it, hidden it so profoundly that no one remembered it was ever meant to be used.

  Someone… or some council.

  She gasped and broke the vision, falling backward onto the stone floor, heart slamming like a war drum against her ribs. The tower room spun. The taste of iron filled her mouth.

  And yet—she’d seen no enemy.

  No sword. No claw. No demon.

  Just a single thread of unclaimed power…

  and the silence that had grown thick around it.

  Selmira dragged herself upright and stared into the quiet basin, now dark as obsidian.

  “This isn’t about what comes for us,” she whispered. “It’s about what we’ve buried beneath our own feet.”

  Beneath the Banner of Smoke

  Evening cloaked Lux Arcana in long, slanted shadows as the ceremonial flame burned quietly in the distance—its golden light reaching but not touching the deeper corners of the stronghold.

  Cassian waited in one of those corners.

  The war room had emptied hours ago, its maps still spread across the central table, its candlelight guttering low. The council had recessed to debate amendments to the Accord’s enforcement clauses. Again. Half the seats were still warm with words that promised unity while breeding suspicion.

  Cassian leaned against the wall, arms crossed, the hood of his ash-gray cloak pulled low. He wasn’t a council member. He wasn’t bound by ritual or rhetoric.

  That was what made him worthwhile.

  The door creaked open.

  Elysia entered, her robes still dusted with faint embers from a fire ritual, her face lined with exhaustion, she didn’t bother to hide. When she saw him, her brows lifted.

  “You’re still here.”

  Cassian pushed off the wall and stepped forward.

  “Didn’t feel like being anywhere else.”

  She approached the table, half expecting more reports, another list of tensions brewing in the southern border covens, or unrest among the mountain packs.

  Instead, he spoke.

  “Let me go in.”

  She blinked, turning toward him.

  “Go where?”

  “Into the dissenting cell forming under Thorne Blackwater’s old lieutenant. The group calling themselves the Crescent Truth.”

  Elysia narrowed her eyes. “You think they’d let you in?”

  “I don’t think they’d even recognize me.”

  That was the truth of it. Cassian was a ghost to most factions—a fighter from a dozen skirmishes, a survivor of the Thalrasi pits, a loyal but quiet shadow in Ronan’s orbit. Forgettable enough to slip into cracks where no official envoy could.

  “They’re gaining followers,” he continued. “Not openly violent, not yet. But their message is spreading fast—the Accord weakens wolf sovereignty. The Veil should be sealed, not governed. The usual paranoia, dressed as patriotism.”

  Elysia rested her hands on the table, silent for a beat.

  “I don’t like the risk.”

  Cassian’s mouth quirked.

  “That’s why I’m offering.”

  He unfolded a small, rune-etched coin from his pocket and placed it on the table. It bore the sigil of a false mercenary guild from the borderlands—one he’d used before. A new name. A new past.

  “Give me seven days. I’ll vanish. If I’m not back in ten… you’ll know where to start looking.”

  She looked at him sharply. “You think I’d let you just disappear like that?”

  Cassian met her gaze, unwavering.

  “You trusted me to bleed for the Accord. Trust me to protect it now.”

  The candle between them sputtered once, then steadied.

  Finally, Elysia gave a nod.

  “Go. Quietly. No heroics. Just eyes and ears.”

  Cassian offered a half-smile, all teeth and trouble.

  “Heroics are overrated.”

  And with that, he turned, slipping through the door and into the gathering dark—already a shadow among shadows.

  The Memory That Burns

  The midnight hour passed unnoticed in the Vault of Flame.

  Deep beneath Lux Arcana, far from the echo of celebration or debate, Selmira knelt alone in a sealed sanctum few even knew existed. The chamber’s walls were carved from obsidian veined with molten gold, and the residue of phoenix fire rituals had long faded from everyday use. At the room’s center stood a pedestal of ashstone, upon which burned a slow, steady flame in the shape of a closed eye.

  A Memoryfire.

  The last of its kind.

  Selmira’s hand hovered over the flame, fingers trembling just slightly. Her most recent vision still clung to her skin like ash—the thread of unclaimed magic, the looming corruption, the silence beneath the Council’s pride. But this wasn’t for warning Elysia.

  This was for herself.

  If everything fell. If the Accord fractured. If even memory failed—

  She would need something more permanent than parchment or prophecy.

  A message sealed in fire and soul.

  Selmira inhaled deeply, then dipped two fingers into the flame.

  It did not burn.

  Instead, it opened, like a pupil dilating, inviting truth.

  She whispered, voice low and binding.

  “To me. To the one who has forgotten. If the flame falters, if the walls collapse from within… If our unity was illusion and our hope turned weapon… Then remember Orlathis.”

  The flame shivered, absorbing the name.

  She continued.

  “Remember the night the stars blinked out, and the sea turned to bone. Remember the oath they erased. Remember the cost of silence. The truth they buried beneath our feet was born in Orlathis.”

  Her breath hitched, but she pressed on, weaving magic into every syllable.

  “Find the vault beneath the northern rootline. Dig where the frost never melts. The map will not survive. But you will. Because you must.”

  The fire turned violet momentarily, then collapsed inward, sealing the memory behind flame and fate.

  It would stay hidden until Selmira touched the fire again. The warnings would have been ignored in some future, and only memory would have remained.

  She sat back, wiping a line of sweat from her brow, the mark of her vision still faintly glowing along her cheekbone.

  “This is my last safeguard,” she whispered to the empty chamber.

  She didn’t pray.

  But she hoped.

  Above her, the towers of Lux Arcana reached for the stars, oblivious to the ember sealed below—waiting, watching.

  Burning.