When I finished the first picture prompt for the month, I turned my attention to the second. I skimmed through my favorited images on DeviantArt and came across Sketch by EVOLIRY. Instantly, I knew I wanted to use it as the inspiration for my next picture story. At first, I had no idea where I’d take the scene. With the deadline looming, I turned to ChatGPT for a batch of seeds to explore. One in particular piqued my interest, and though I quickly strayed from the original concept, it gave me enough to spark a story I may want to develop further.
The last flickers of light slip behind the horizon, leaving a dwindling glow across the bay like a fleeting promise. Standing on the pier, Kaelyn feels the wind tug at her cloak and the salt fill her lungs, her gaze fixed on the artifact in her hand. It hums with restrained violence, its glow swelling as the night closes in. The ruling council has long warned of the relic’s dangers.
As darkness and danger loom, her mind flashes back to another instance of devastation. The council sees only risk, but Kaelyn sees necessity. The artifact is not the weapon they fear, it is a promise, a bond between her people and their history. Tonight, the tide brings more than waves. It carries the shadow of those who would ravage their homeland. Kaelyn must choose between unleashing the flame within, or watching the light of her people fade into memory. Whatever the cost, she knows one truth with unshakable certainty, a keeper’s flame is meant to burn.
As the sun raced behind the distant ridge, it cut the sky like the last breath of a dying creature, the fading warmth brushing her cheeks as if in farewell. As the last embers of the sun’s journey plunged under the horizon, Kaelyn stood at the pier’s edge, coastal waters lapping against the dock. With the dying sunlight, the artifact’s soft glow cut through the descending night, humming like a caged storm.
She inched closer to the water, filling her lungs with salty air. Her cloak snapped in the wind, curling about the artifact’s glow. She raised her hands, palms up, letting the budding starlight caress the talisman, amplifying its glow. With each passing second, the inner flame swelled and danced all the wilder. It lifted off her hand, hovering over her palm like a second moon, its heat prickling her skin like static before a storm.
Kaelyn closed her fingers around the sphere, letting its glow dim to nothing more than a smolder. The warbled cries of ravens rebounded off the distant landmarks as they faded into silence, as though the night itself was listening. The council maintained the artifact was too powerful to use. They preached that the price was far too steep. A few of them even recalled that previous users of the artifact had vanished.
However, Kaelyn had searched for and rooted out the truth. After her desperate search, she’d discovered what the council had buried. Within a nearby keep, neighboring a frozen marsh, she found nothing but destruction and evidence suggesting that massive predators had fed on the structure.
Unfortunately, she feared her people would suffer the same fate. Despite her worry, she was determined to prevent her town or the townsfolk from becoming these marauders’ next target. She stepped forward, the planks beneath her boots whispering and aching with her every sway in time with the water’s ebb and flow. As the night extinguished the dwindling sunlight, a circle of sigils encircled her.
Kaelyn raised her staff with one hand as she cradled the artifact in the other. The stone talisman pulsed in rhythm with her breath. She closed her eyes and touched one of the floating marks. The moment it touched the sigil, her staff’s tip flared crimson as it absorbed the glyph. “One for blood.”
“One for root,” she said, maneuvering the staff to another sigil. The staff consumed it as it flared with a deep verdant color. She swept the staff toward a third glyph, and once again the staff consumed the violet coloring. “And one… for soul.”
Her staff erupted with white light. She touched the tip against the talisman in her other hand. From within the stone, spectral tendrils emerged. They began winding, writhing, and reaching toward the sky, brushing her shoulders like long-forgotten hands. Each of the formless masses carried a memory. One reminded her of a lullaby her mother once sang to her. Then she remembered when her sister had laughed under a summer tree. Finally, the memory of witnessing a river freeze over filled her mind’s eye.
Kaelyn turned her attention from her flooding memories to the artifact in her hand. She saw threads linking the townsfolk to the spell. Her sharp intake of breath wasn’t because of pain, though there was plenty. It was derived from the spell’s magnitude. The enormity of binding hope to history would have made her flinch if she hadn’t prepared for it.
The planks beneath her cracked. Yet she didn’t plummet into the water, despite lacking a surface to stand on. She held her position as the shards crashed into the swirling waters below. Thankfully, Kaelyn wasn’t a member of the council. She knew the truth. The reason behind casting this spell mattered. She wasn’t attempting to remake the world in her image. Rather, she was trying to protect the corner she cared about.
When the spell reached its peak, the flame within the artifact burned white-hot, the air trembling, tasting of copper and ash. Kaelyn dropped to one knee, driving the butt of her staff into a nearby plank. The surviving planks groaned, and from the artifact, a sphere of light surged outward, washing over the bay.
The ships that were crossing the bay’s threshold dissolved into the light, leaving only ripples where they had been. When the sudden illumination disappeared, hands caught her and dragged her off the dock, laying her on the grass. She looked up and saw a handful of shadowy figures, their voices low and feral. After an eternity of heartbeats, pieces of the conversation settled into her mind.
Laughter bubbled through her lips, and the figures stared down at her. One of them leaned over her. “Why are you laughing?”
“Not one of you ever understood the artifact’s true purpose.”
“Purpose?” one scoffed. “Its only purpose has been destruction.”
“And it’s gone,” another said.
“Those who created the Emberglass made a perfect defense.” Kaelyn said as she propped herself on an elbow. “Someone needed to understand the purpose of the magic. And choose to defend our people.”
“Congratulations,” the first council member said, “you saved us. Until the next enemy attacks.”
The weight of their words hung in the air, the grass whispering under a burst of wind. Kaelyn’s lips curled into a knowing smile. “Is that what you believe?”
“It’s what the magic promised if we ever used it,” yet another council member said.
“The Emberglass no longer rests in stone. It lives within me.” She lifted her free hand, revealing the dancing flame embedded in her arm. “Provided my heart beats, this light will guard us.”
The first council member who spoke to her sneered at the frail woman. “You’re far too weak to make that claim.”
Her laughter intensified as she rose from the ground and inclined her head. She raised a hand, and shot over their heads, her mirth mingling with the whisper of the tide she’d sworn to protect. “Provided I breathe, my people will survive! I’m the Emberglass!”