Wardens of the Flame

Hope rises on wings of flame.

We keep the old law of fire: to warm, to warn, to wield only when the night would swallow the world.

I write from Highspire Citadel, where the wind tastes of snow and iron and the eyries wake before dawn. The banners are thinner now than in the grand tapestries of the Era of Ascendance, but the oath holds—bound in ash and breath between rider and dragon, teacher and student, hearth and horizon.

Ascendance.
Our order learned its shape when the mountains learned our names. The Pact of Flame and Aether was less a spell than a promise: dragons would not be chained, and humans would not be passengers. We rose together. High Flamekeeper Aeraleth walked the sky-bridges with soot on his hands from the flame-masons who welded tower to cliff. Sky-Dragons coiled in the morning thermals, scales bright as new-forged coin; Stormriders leapt from the eyries at the first growl of thunder, returning stinking of lightning and pride. We kept peace more often than we made war—escorting caravans above avalanche-prone passes, adjudicating feuds with the weight of dragon-shadow upon the stones, and parleying with Skyreach scholars and Galdrowen druids under the watch of the sun. The first cadets learned to bow to the dragon’s will as much as the dragon bent to theirs. Balance through wisdom and fire.

Fracture.
Then came the scream beneath the earth—the Shattering—and balance cracked. Leylines lurched; storms learned new paths; the bond faltered. Dragons who had known us all their lives woke with eyes like open wounds, and some fled, ripping the sky with grief. Daranor the Unmoored, once Aeraleth’s partner in patrol, tore the clouds and would not answer horn or prayer. We spent months retrieving riderless saddles, years retrieving our courage. The citadel shook, not from siege engines but from our own doubts. In the councils we argued: reform the pact or preserve it; reach for new forms of bond or stand fast and wait for the world to settle. Ser Kaelen Duskveil trained cadets with a stern mercy, teaching them to fight rogues without hating them. Ysara Flamewing patrolled the broken borders, reckless and loyal, a flare in human form. We bled, but we did not break. Even in that hard age we escorted pilgrims to the drowned edges of Vaelorien and traded news with Skyreach remnants clinging to the air.

Twilight.
War finally found us openly. Thar Zûl lifted its black banners from the ash fields and named the sky a battleground. We rose—scarred, fewer, angrier. The Last Sky War is taught to new cadets in three breaths: first, the climb; second, the clash; third, the cost. Magma-Drakes spat mountains at us. Stormriders danced inside lightning and dragged the bolts aside like curtains. We won heights, lost friends, and learned what zeal sounds like when it sings. When the embers cooled, the map showed fewer keeps, the eyries echoed, and the fire in the crest around our rising sun seemed—for a time—to dim. Aeraleth’s line passed to the Flamebearer, who carried grief like a standard and still found a way to hold the borders. With House Elavorn we forged the Pact of Tides, sharing relics raised from the deeps to keep our forges alight and our spirits from rusting. We did not triumph. We endured.

Echoes.
Endurance ripened into resolve. Under Aurelion Flameheart the Wardens said the words we had whispered for too long: rise. We proclaimed the Oath of Reclamation with Vaelorien and sent emissaries to Galdrowen to mend paths we had allowed to go wild. The Prism Star returned, and with it the Bonding Awakens—the first new partnerships in a generation. Not all bonded as before. From the archives and the eyries came a remembered lineage—the Embermanes, dragons whose fire listens to the heart that rides them. When Nyra Flamebond and Ignivar flared together on the practice range, the fire brightened in sympathy, turning discipline into a duet. Veterans grumbled at first, then taught the music.

Aurelion is not blind to threats. Thar Zûl troubles the deep earth again, whispering of an Embercore that burns hotter than sanity. Duskfall Mire’s Whispering Bloom moves like fog among councils; we do not strike at mist, but we learn to fly by instruments older than sight: duty, witness, and the quiet accounting of debts. With Skyreach Spires, half-ruin and half-hope beneath their Starseers, we trade knowledge without forgetting how the sky once fell. And some nights, when the wind comes from the old fractures, we still hear wings beating alone. We light beacons for dragons who left us, and for riders whose partners never returned. Daranor circles the memories of our halls like a storm that cannot make landfall. Perhaps one day even the Unmoored will tire of drifting.

What We Keep.
The Wardens keep three fires. The first burns on the mountain: the hearth fire, for warmth and welcome, the flame that dries boots and softens stubborn hearts after long patrols. The second burns in the mind: the watch fire, that refuses convenient lies and keeps old treaties sharper than blades. The third burns in the bond: a fire braided between species, a covenant that does not ask for obedience but for honesty. We have learned—twice over—that force without wisdom is only heat, and wisdom without courage is only smoke.

So we teach. Cadets run the Highspire Steps until they can recite the lineages of dragons between breaths. They spar with wooden staves until they understand that a sky-lance is only a promise delivered at speed. They study histories written by allies and enemies both. They write to the families of the fallen in their own hands before learning any script for ceremony. And when a dragon chooses them—if a dragon chooses them—no horn sounds, no choir sings. A wing lowers. A hand rests. Two breaths learn to agree.

You will find us wherever the horizon is argued over. On avalanche ridges where caravans need a windbreak. Over Vaelorien’s mirror seas, escorting divers who seek the Deep Chime’s song. On the edges of Galdrowen, where we match patience to patience and leave without breaking even a twig. And, when necessary, above the volcanic dark of Thar Zûl, where our shadows try to remind ash that it once cooled into soil.

The world calls us proud. Perhaps. Pride keeps the spine straight when the saddle is empty. But hear the truth pressed into our signet rings: a golden dragon encircling a rising sun is not triumph—it is guardianship. We circle what dawn there is and ask only that it rise.

If you carry a light, walk with us. If you carry a spark, we’ll teach you the wind. If all you carry is loss, we have room at the hearth. The law of fire still holds.