A Flame Forsaken

In the months that followed the fall of the Radiant Flame's bastion, whispers of Valmaia’s wrath spread like smoke through the borderlands. Villages once loyal to the church fell silent in her wake. Sanctuaries stood abandoned, their walls scorched with the symbol she carved into stone and flesh alike—a broken chain, encircled in flame. But vengeance, as sweet as it tasted, did little to soothe the hollow ache in her chest.
 
That ache had a name.
 
Her mother.
 
The face she only knew from a single, half-burnt sketch her father had kept hidden in a locked drawer. The voice she had never heard. The presence she had longed for in every moment of her agony. Valmaia had grown up believing her mother dead or stolen away. But when the fiend’s whispers reached into the marrow of her memories, they stirred more than rage—they stirred questions. Ka’rozzel had seen into her soul, and through its infernal connection, it glimpsed things Valmaia had never known. Her mother was alive.
 
And she had left them.
 
The truth struck deeper than any priest’s blade: her mother had not been hunted, nor slain in a desperate attempt to return. She had fled. She had chosen survival over defiance. She had walked away.
Valmaia told herself she wanted answers. That this search was about understanding. Closure. But beneath the surface, venom festered. Her father had died screaming, bones shattered under the boots of the faithful, and her mother—her own blood—had not been there to stop it. Had not even tried. If she had stood by them, perhaps they could’ve escaped. Perhaps the chains would never have been forged.
 
The thought haunted her as much as it fueled her.
 
So she searched. Through forgotten border towns, among tiefling enclaves hidden deep in the wilds, in cities where devil-blooded folk whispered of a woman with eyes like dusk and a voice that cracked like wind through glass. Each clue, each name, each false lead drove the blade deeper.
 
Sometimes she imagined what she would say.