The Ember Throne
The eternal flame has burned for a century without faltering, until the night it gutters, and a shadow whispers Kaelia's name. Frozen at her window, Kaelia alone witnesses the moment the fire that sustains the Ember Court stumbles for the first time in living memory. No one else saw it. No one else heard the voice. But Kaelia knows with a certainty that sits like stone in her chest: the two events are connected, and whatever spoke to her from the darkness has been waiting a very long time. As the flame continues to weaken, the court's powerful factions move to hide the truth, each with their own designs on what should replace the old order when the light finally dies. Kaelia, an unlikely watcher with no claim to power, becomes the only person who can trace the shadow's call back to its source, a source entwined with the flame's origin and, impossibly, with her own. Hunted by those who would silence her and drawn by a presence that seems to know her better than she knows herself, Kaelia must choose: protect the fragile world the eternal fire has sustained, or answer the darkness that calls her name, and learn what the flame has truly been keeping at bay. The fate of the Ember Court rests on a single question: when the last light fails, what will rise from the ashes?