Violet’s Child

[note: This story contains allusions to violence and suicide/self harm]

With every pounding step, fear clawed at her insides, and she could only keep running. Her ragged breaths formed white clouds in the frigid air, while the violet flames trailing from her hands left delicate patterns of frost on the undergrowth she passed.

It was a grueling challenge, especially considering the life she carried within her; her brother's command echoed in her mind like a lifeline amidst her swirling fears. Run, he had said. It was the last words she would ever hear from him, spoken as he pushed her through the servant's door while violet flames - real ones, not the false Bearer's corrupted version - flickered to life around his hands in a final, desperate defense. The memory of his sacrifice burned deeper than any physical exhaustion could reach.

Lysandra Kennon pressed one hand against the swell of her belly as she climbed the spiraling staircase, the chilling air heavy with smoke and the sounds of chaos chasing her upwards. The baby kicked furiously inside her, as if sensing her fear. The stone steps were slick with ice—her own doing, a desperate attempt to slow her pursuers. She had always been able to control her flame with precision, but tonight it spilled from her in wild bursts, leaving crystalline frost patterns in her wake.

As the screams from the city below echoed in her ears, she realized there was nowhere left to run. She breathed in the cold air of the Winter Palace and wept. For a moment, she allowed herself to collapse against the wall of the tower, her body shaking with silent sobs.

Violet light flickered around her fingertips unbidden. Even now, the flame responded to her emotions, casting eerie shadows on the stone walls. How had it come to this? The Kennon family had guarded the Violet Flame for centuries. They had preserved Ardere through countless winters, maintained the balance between life and death, between preservation and renewal.

In the span of a single night, all was lost. The Frost Palace lay in ruins. The Violet Flame, once steadfast and enduring, flickered slightly in the hands of the last daughter of the Kennon line.

Voices echoed down the hall below, and Lysandra forced herself to move, one hand still sat on her swollen belly, the other trailing along the wall for support. The baby wouldn't wait much longer. She had felt the first pains begin during the state dinner, hours before the attack. Before Darius Casimir had revealed his true intentions. Before the screams and clash of steel had shattered the night's festivities, transforming the great hall into a killing ground. Even now, she could smell the acrid smoke of burning tapestries and hear the heavy boots of Casimir soldiers as they methodically searched the palace, hunting down the last of her family.

Before he had forced her to watch as he drove a sword through his own brother’s heart.

Alaric. Her love. The father of her child. Dead by his brother’s hand and for the crime of loving her.

“The Lady went this way!” a voice called from below. “There’s frost on the walls!”

Agony tore through her as the labor pains intensified, forcing her to stifle a scream. The contractions quickened their relentless pace. In her condition, survival seemed impossible. The truth descended upon her like winter frost. She had no path to freedom, no way out.

Yet her baby might still have hope.

She stumbled forward, searching desperately for somewhere to hide. The old servant’s entrance—she remembered it from childhood explorations. Behind a tapestry depicting the First Binding, she found the narrow door. It groaned as she pushed it open, revealing a tight passage meant for servants to move unseen through the palace.

Another contraction dropped her to her knees. The baby was coming. Here, in the palace that had been her home, while her family was slaughtered below.

“My Lady!”

Lysandra raised her hands defensively, violet flames dancing between her fingers. Then she recognized the blood-streaked face of Elias Gray, captain of her brother’s personal guard. His sword was drawn but dripping with blood—Casimir blood, she hoped.

“Elias,” she gasped, lowering her hands. “They’ve killed them all.”

“Not you,” he said firmly, sheathing his sword and helping her into the passage. “Not yet. Come, there’s a room ahead where we can hide.”

She let him guide her deeper into the passage until they reached a small storage room. Elias barricaded the door with a shelf and turned to her with grim determination.

Her jaw tight with pain, Lysandra forced out the words: "My time has arrived. The infant won't wait."

Elias's expression registered shock, though he maintained his composure. "So be it - we'll welcome new life tonight, even as death stalks the halls."

Another contraction tore through her, more intense than the last, making her whole body shudder with its force. Lysandra bit down hard on her sleeve to muffle her scream, tasting wool and salt as tears leaked from her eyes. When it finally passed, leaving her trembling and drained, she clutched Elias's arm with desperate strength.

"Listen to me," she whispered urgently, her voice hoarse from holding back cries of pain. "If they find us, they'll kill the child without hesitation. Darius knows exactly what this baby represents—a true Kennon heir with Casimir blood flowing through its veins. A living embodiment of both houses, and a threat to everything he's built on lies and murder."

"They won't find us," Elias insisted, but his eyes betrayed his uncertainty as they darted between the heavy wooden door and the narrow window high above them.

"If they do," she continued, gripping his sleeve with trembling fingers, "you must run. Take my child and run to the Sacred Grove. The Heart Tree will recognize Kennon blood. It will protect you both until you can find sanctuary with those still loyal to our house."

Elias helped her lie back on his cloak, which he had spread across the stone floor of the abandoned temple storehouse. The rough wool offered little comfort against the cold granite, but it was all they had. "My Lady, I'm sworn to protect you—"

"Your oath now extends to my child," Lysandra cut him off, her voice suddenly regal despite her pain, every word carrying the weight of centuries of Kennon authority. "This baby is the last true Violet Flame Bearer. The last hope for Ardere. Without it, everything my family has preserved for a thousand years will crumble to dust."

Shouts echoed through the passageways, but they sounded distant still, muffled by the ancient stone walls and the howling winter wind outside. For three hours, Elias helped Lysandra through her labor, using his field medical knowledge gained from years on the northern borders treating soldiers and villagers alike. The tiny room grew colder as Lysandra's control over her flame wavered, frost creeping up the walls with each wave of pain. Delicate patterns of ice spread across the ceiling like frozen spiderwebs, glowing faintly with traces of violet light as her power leaked out unbidden.

Finally, as the first light of dawn crept through a tiny window near the ceiling, a baby’s cry pierced the silence.

“A girl,” Elias whispered, holding up the tiny, perfect infant. “A healthy girl, my Lady.”

Lysandra reached for her daughter with trembling hands. The moment she touched the child’s skin, a delicate pattern of frost spread from her fingertips, encircling the baby like a blessing. The infant didn’t cry out from the cold—instead, her wailing ceased, and her tiny face relaxed in contentment.

“Freya,” Lysandra murmured, brushing her lips against her daughter’s forehead. “Her name is Freya.”

The sounds of searching grew closer. Metal against stone, voices calling out.

“My Lady, we must go,” Elias urged.

But Lysandra shook her head, her face pale and drawn. She had lost too much blood. They both knew it. The footsteps outside grew louder, more insistent.

“They’re coming,” she whispered, looking down at her newborn daughter with desperate fear. “Take her. Hide her.”

Elias reached for the child, but Lysandra held up a trembling hand. “Wait,” she said. “I can buy you time.”

With the last of her strength, Lysandra gathered the Violet Flame into her hands. Unlike the erratic bursts from earlier, this was controlled—the work of a true Bearer despite her weakened state. The cold fire danced between her fingers as she gazed at her daughter one last time.

“They must believe she died with me,” she whispered.

The violet flames engulfed the infant, not in a consuming blaze but in a gentle cocoon of shimmering light. Ice crystals formed rapidly, encasing the baby in a perfect, protective shell.

“It will keep her safe,” Lysandra explained, her voice fading. “Hidden. Preserved. When you’re far enough away...” She struggled to continue, her strength failing. “The ice should melt. It’s only meant to... to hide her for a little while.”

As the last words left her lips, Lysandra’s hands fell to her sides. With her remaining strength, she enveloped herself in a separate cocoon of ice—a final act of deception to make pursuers believe both mother and child had chosen death over capture.

“Go!” she gasped, the ice sealing over her face. “Through the window, Elias! Hurry, while you still can!” While you still can.”

Elias stood frozen for a moment, the ice-encased infant cradled in his arms. Then the barricade against the door shuddered with impact. He wrapped his cloak around the frozen child and climbed through the narrow window into the cold dawn.

Behind him, the door to the alcove splintered inward.

—

Elias fled south with his precious cargo, evading Casimir’s hunters for days. The small ice cocoon containing the infant did not melt as Lysandra had predicted. Something was different—the ice remained solid, the child perfectly visible and preserved within, as if in peaceful sleep.

On the fourth day, wounded and exhausted, Elias reached a small cabin deep in the forest where his sixteen-year-old son, Elian, was training with a local healer. The boy rushed to his father as he collapsed at the threshold.

“Father! What’s happened?” Elian’s eyes widened as he saw the bundle in his father’s arms and the glittering cocoon within. “What is this?”

“The last Kennon,” Elias whispered, blood seeping through his tunic. “Lysandra’s daughter. The true Violet Flame heir.”

That night, as Elian tended to his father’s wounds, Elias explained everything—the massacre, Lysandra’s sacrifice, and the mysterious preservation of the infant. They examined the ice cocoon together, puzzled by its resilience.

“Her mother’s flame was meant to hide her temporarily,” Elias said, touching the smooth surface of the ice. “But something has changed. The child sleeps, preserved perfectly within.”

“How do we free her?” Elian asked.

Elias shook his head. “I’ve tried everything. The ice resists all normal means. It’s as if...” He hesitated. “As if the flame itself has a purpose we don’t understand.”

In the days that followed, they tried everything to melt the ice—fire, salt, even carefully applied hammer blows. Nothing worked. The infant remained suspended in her frozen state, peaceful and unchanging.

“Perhaps it’s for the best,” Elias finally said, as they concealed the cocoon in a hidden cellar beneath the cabin floor. “Casimir hunts for her still. In this state, she’s protected until it’s safe.”

But safety did not come quickly. Within a fortnight, Casimir’s men tracked Elias to the forest’s edge. Though he led them away from the cabin, he was eventually captured and executed for his loyalty to House Kennon.

Young Elian, now alone, took up the mantle of guardian. As months passed with no change in the frozen child, he moved her to a more secure location—a hidden cave deep in the northern forest known only to him. There, he established a small shrine around the ice cocoon, visiting weekly to check on his charge.

One year became five, became ten. Elian grew from a boy into a man, established himself as a healer in the distant village of Emberdale, and continued his secret guardianship. He studied what fragments of flame lore he could find, searching for answers about the child’s condition.

The world outside changed dramatically. Casimir’s rule brought false stability that gradually gave way to environmental decay. The remaining six Flame Bearers performed their ritual circle with decreasing effectiveness. The Sacred Forest began to die from its edges inward.

And still, the child slept, unchanged within her icy cocoon.

—

Fifty years passed. Elian Gray, once a young apprentice healer, was now an old man with silver hair and weathered hands. He had never married, never had children of his own—his life dedicated to his healing practice and his secret guardianship.

Every month without fail, despite his age and the increasing difficulty of the journey, he made the pilgrimage to the hidden cave where the ice-bound child remained. For half a century, he had kept his vigil, watching over the infant who never aged, never changed, suspended in that perfect moment of preservation.

Many times he had wondered if she would ever awaken. Many times he had questioned whether his life’s devotion had been in vain. But the oath he had made to his father kept him returning, month after month, year after year.

On this particular journey—exactly fifty years after the Night of Violet Embers—Elian noticed something different as he approached the cave. The air felt warmer, charged with an energy he had never felt before. The snow around the cave entrance had melted in a perfect circle, revealing green shoots pushing through soil that had been frozen for decades.

His heart pounding with a mixture of hope and disbelief, Elian rushed inside, his old joints protesting the sudden movement. The ice cocoon that had remained unchanged for half a century was now glowing with an inner violet light. Hairline cracks spread across its surface, releasing small puffs of cold mist into the air.

Elian dropped his walking staff and knelt beside the cocoon, scarcely daring to breathe. The ice fractured further, the cracks forming intricate patterns like frost on a window. Then, with a sound like crystal bells, the cocoon shattered completely.

There, lying on a bed of glittering ice shards, was a perfect, newborn infant girl—exactly as she had been fifty years ago when Lysandra Kennon had encased her in preserving ice. Her tiny hands reached upward, grasping at the air, and when she opened her eyes for the first time in half a century, they glowed with unmistakable violet light.

The baby let out a cry—her first in fifty years—a sound that seemed to ripple through the cave and beyond, as if the land itself recognized her awakening.

With trembling hands, Elian gently lifted the infant, wrapping her in the blanket he had brought—the same blanket he had brought every month for fifty years, just in case. Tears streamed down his weathered face as he cradled her.

“Freya,” he whispered, remembering the name Lysandra had given her daughter. “You’ve finally returned to us.”

As if in response, delicate frost patterns formed where the baby’s fingers touched the blanket—patterns that glowed with an inner violet light.

Outside the cave, for the first time in decades, snow began to fall from a clear sky—gentle flakes that settled on the withered forest like a blessing. In the Sacred Grove miles away, the Heart Tree shuddered, dropping a single crystalline tear from its branches.

The last true Violet Flame of Ardere had finally awakened.