The Last Ember
A black column of smoke rises beyond the Ashlands frontier, and from her post on Ashenmere's eastern wall, watchwoman Sera Valdris watches her world begin to burn. For a generation, the realm of Queen Reva Sorenhal has held its breath against the slow collapse of the kingdoms to the east. Raiders have dwindled. Treaties have held. But the smoke rising on this dawn is no raid, it is the geometry of cities falling, one after another, into ash. When the ancient ember kept in the city's shrine gutters and dies in the same hour, Sera knows the omen for what it is: the last spark of an old compact between crown and frontier is broken. Summoned from her watch by Sergeant Hael, she is brought before the queen and her heir, Prince Kael Sorenhal, who fear the silence from across the border more than any army. Their answer is to ride into the dying lands and recover what was lost before it falls into the wrong hands, a company led by Bryn Caldor and watched by the pitiless Inquisitor Edric, who trusts no one's innocence. But the deeper Sera rides, the more the line between enemy and ally blurs. Lord Cassian Veylan, whose death a decade past made peace possible, left behind a sealed confession that names traitors still breathing in the queen's own court. And in her dreams, the face of Maren Ashwood, the scholar who taught her to read the ash and the only friend she has ever lost, keeps returning to warn her of a fire no ember can relight. At the edge of the Ashlands, Sera must choose: carry the last ember home and risk that it was never meant to be relit, or let it die in the ruins and watch a kingdom fall with it.