The Boy Who Followed

The cheers do not return.

The chamber holds its breath, as if afraid even sound might disturb what has been set in motion. Hundreds of eyes remain fixed on me. Not with wonder, but with expectation. Like the world itself has leaned in, waiting for the next line in a story too old to stop.

I swallow, and the sound feels loud.

Kelthis lowers his staff, and the last threads of white radiance fade from the air like mist burning off in sunlight.

He surveys the crowd once, then turns to me, and whatever humour once lived in his eyes is gone.

“Now,” he says softly. “Listen carefully, Vaelor.”

His voice does not rise, yet it carries.

“I know you are confused — not only by our presence, but by the journey before you. I will reveal what I can. But first… you must understand who we are.”

He pauses, as though weighing each word.

“I must tell you a story. A tale woven deep into the marrow of our people. Ages have turned since the first men walked beneath the open sky. Kingdoms have risen. Empires have fallen. Yet one thing has endured through every age, carried from ash to crown like a sacred thread.”

Kelthis lifts a finger, and the light from the crystal atop his staff catches in his eyes.

“A symbol of memory. Of the journey our people have endured since the first turning of the world.”

He leans closer.

“A white owl, bearing the mark of the First Flame.”

Kelthis’ staff rests against the stone, the crystal dim now, but still watching the room like an unblinking star.

He does not raise his voice.

He doesn’t need to.

“Long before Thalrindor had walls,” he says, “before markets, before banners, before the first bells ever rang beneath this mountain… there was only the wild world and the hunger that lived inside it.”

His gaze drifts past me, into something far away.

“In those first days, men did not build cities. They hid. They clung to fire like children clinging to a parent in the dark. And the dark… the dark had teeth.”

The crowd is silent as death behind him, listening with the stillness of people who have heard this tale since infancy, but never with this weight.

Kelthis draws a slow breath.

“Then one winter, when the sky gave no dawn and the cold swallowed the forests whole, a girl was taken beyond the firelight. Dragged into the world between things. Her name has changed a thousand times, but the wound of her absence has never healed.”

I feel Gloomsheer stir faintly at my side, as though the blade recognises the story.

“They searched,” Kelthis continues, voice tightening, “but the storm erased footprints. The wind devoured cries. And the night gave nothing back.”

He lifts his hand, and his fingers tremble — not with age, but with veneration.

“Until an owl descended from the black sky… white as ash. It landed upon the last ember of the dying flame — unafraid, unburned.”

He points to the sky.

A soft pulse trickles past me. I cannot see it, but I feel it move through the chamber like breath over glass. The air above my head tightens, twisting into a slow, spiralling current.

High in the vaulted dark, something pale begins to form.

A white owl unfurls out of nothing, feathers stitched from light and mist. It circles once above the crowd before tucking its wings. It dives like a falling star — silent, powerful.

As it nears, it spreads its wings wide.

Wind bursts outward in a violent gust, tugging hair, cloaks, banners; the whole chamber shivering as if the past itself has exhaled.

Kelthis extends his arm. The owl levels out effortlessly, gliding to him as though drawn by an old pledge, and settles upon his shoulder.

Without missing a beat, he continues.

“In the earliest age, when the world still belonged to hunger and sorrow, our ancestors learned what it meant to endure.”

“The white owl above the dying flame is not merely an emblem.”

“It is our vow to survive.”

His gaze drifts to the owl.

“And the girl…”

He looks back at me.

“…is why you are here.”

His voice lowers, as though speaking too loudly might wake something sleeping.

“She is the reason our people never let the festival die. The reason we carved the owl into banners, tombs, pillars — into the bones of every kingdom that followed. Not for beauty. Not for tradition.”

His hand tightens around the staff.

“But because the world between things does not forget what it takes.”

“And neither do we.”

He pauses.

When his eyes find mine again, the air itself seems to draw taut.

“Vaelor… the girl was not simply taken.”

“She was bound.”

The word lands, and the world feels suddenly sharper.

The owl on Kelthis’ shoulder remains perfectly still, but Gloomsheer hums at my side — low and uneasy, as if the blade itself resents the truth being spoken aloud.

Kelthis steps closer, his expression solemn.

“Not by rope. Not by chain,” he murmurs. “She was bound by time. By power older than language — the kind that crawls through cracks in reality. The kind that does not kill…”

“…because death would be mercy.”

“It takes what it wants alive — and remakes it.”

His eyes harden, and for the first time I see not a storyteller, but a man who has stared into horror and learned to stay standing.

“It dragged her beyond flame… into the Umbral Reach,” he says. “Into the hunger you’ve already begun to feel stalking you through these halls.”

Cold creeps up my spine.

Instinct drags my eyes over my shoulder, searching the dark for movement that isn’t there.

I force my gaze forward.

“I don’t understand,” I say, my voice rougher than I expect. “I know her. I have memories of us as children — clear as waking day. She couldn’t be from the First Age…”

Kelthis places a hand on my shoulder — not heavy, not forceful, but certain.

“Then listen,” he says gently.

“Let me tell you the role flame plays in this story.”

“On the day she was taken, someone followed her.”

Kelthis’ voice softens — not with kindness, but with gravity.

“A boy too stubborn to let the dark win.”

“He stepped beyond the flame… and into the Umbral Reach.”

Kelthis looks at me as though the answer has been written on my bones all along.

“And he has been searching for her ever since.”

“You are that boy, Vaelor.”

My chest tightens beneath the weight of his words. I grip Gloomsheer tighter, hoping this is another deception — another test I can fight instead of face. Yet something deep within me knows it’s true. It’s almost as if that boy is screaming from a locked chamber in my mind, shouting at me to wake up.

To remember.

To fight.

I clear my throat and steady myself.

“If this is true,” I say, voice low, “then how long have Zephyr and I been here?”

Excited murmurs ripple through the chamber. The expressions in the crowd shift — not into wild celebration, but into something tempered, awed. They embrace loved ones, press whispers into ears, holding their joy tightly in their chests, as though even breathing too loudly might offend fate.

They do not dare rouse Kelthis again.

But Kelthis himself looks… unprepared.

Beneath his stunned expression, I can almost see the gears turning, searching for footing.

“What did I say?” I ask quietly. “What does that mean?”

Kelthis clears his throat.

“My apologies, Vaelor,” he says slowly. “You must understand… her name was lost to us long ago.”

His eyes narrow, as if listening to something beyond the chamber.

“To hear you speak it so plainly — Zephyr — is no small thing. That name is steeped in our society. Sacred.”

He gestures faintly toward the vaulted dark above.

“She shares it with the Goddess of the Winds.”

Kelthis scratches his beard, as if weighing a meaning too dangerous to speak aloud.

He raises his hand, ready to continue. But before a single word leaves his mouth, the bell tolls again, drowning all other sound.

The echo lingers through the cavern like a warning older than time.

Kelthis stiffens.

“What? We’ve already lost half our time?” His jaw tightens. “Forgive me, Vaelor. I have wasted what little the festival grants us. I must finish the story…”

His eyes lock onto mine.

“Your story.”

I nod, not daring to spend even a breath on words. I will need all the help I can get, and something in my bones tells me this man carries the guidance I’ve been starving for.

Kelthis inclines his head.

“Very well.”

He raises his arm, and the owl launches at once — silent, effortless. It climbs into the cavern’s still air, and the higher it soars, the brighter it becomes. Fiery red sparks flare with every beat of its wings, its wake twisting and warping as though a midday sun has somehow found its way beneath the earth.

The owl circles above us.

Its gaze shifts.

To me.

It screeches. Sharp and commanding.

And then the white body ignites.

Not with the rage of an inferno…

…but with the calm dance of a thousand candles licking the air in unison, bending with the wind as though flame and sky were one and the same.

It does not look like a creature burning.

It looks like a creature made of fire.

As if flame and feather were never meant to be separate — kindred spirits reunited, becoming something steadier than power.

Something older.

Something sworn.

“You need to know what flame is,” Kelthis says quietly.

“You think it is heat. Light. A tool men once used to push back the dark.”

He shakes his head.

“Flame is not merely fire, Vaelor. Flame is the First Defiance.”

His eyes burn with something older than reverence.

“It is the reason our people did not vanish in the Time of Turmoil. It is the reason we stared into hunger and did not look away. It is the symbol we carried from ruin to ruin, not because it gave comfort…”

“…but because it gave courage.”

Kelthis’s fingers tighten on the staff.

“You are the First Flame returned. Not as a boy. Not as a man.”

“As a truth.”

He leans closer, voice dropping like a vow.

“When the end comes — and it will — you two will not face it alone. You will carry our history in your blood. You will carry our memory in your hands.”

“And when you stand before the darkness at the end of all things…”

Kelthis gestures to the crowd, to the banners, to the air itself.

“We will be beside you.”

His gaze hardens.

“Because you are not simply flame.”

“You are resilience given form.”

A stillness settles over the chamber.

Even the owl above seems to hover in place, its flames bending like kneeling figures in the wind.

And in the faces watching me — those hundreds of witnesses — I no longer see fear.

I see inheritance.

Duty.

I grip Gloomsheer tighter.

And somewhere inside my skull, that locked-away boy begins to scream again — not in terror… but in anticipation.