The strange flame first appears to Thaumiel when he steps foot into the lower level of the dungeon. It dangles high above him in one of the taller ruin structures, outside of an arched window that glows an eerie blue. Blue. The reason it stood out to him.

Thaumiel watched it swing quietly for a while before ultimately deciding it wasn’t worth the risk of attempting to ascend such a dilapidated structure. He was here just to do a scout – in and out, reporting back to the Knights with what information he could gather. Though his heart tugs at something higher above, it can’t buy his time at the moment. 

He opts to pursue further. The blue hue haunts him even as his eyes close back on the surface and night claims his consciousness. 

The second time, it’s dangling high above the entrance to the lower floors. Thaumiel swears it's the same brazier. He furrows his brow into a frown as he stares up at it – the heat that emanates from the lower levels of the fallen kingdom is almost overshadowed by the chill the brazier emanates.

It sways back and forth in the draft. It’s almost like a welcome sign. Welcome back, it beckons. Welcome back.

Clutching the unicorn horn between his teeth, he wields the fashioned spear at a part of the dungeons he normally felt relatively at ease with. The blue glints against the gold of it, reflecting back into the openness.

It … could be just a different brazier. The fallen kingdom shifted and changed over time, and it’s more than likely that in a week this entrance deeper below would be gone and buried beneath the overgrowth. It’s more than likely that this is just another facet of something changing in this place with no law, order, or rule.

He peers around every corner expecting blue. The molten dungeons are always sweltering and rarely show signs of cooling down, and Thaumiel finds himself not only curious about the lantern that emitted a chill, but wanting for it. When the heat clings to his pelt and dampens it with sweat, he thinks of that haunting fragment of a thought.

The third time is as he rounds a corner, pressing up against the stone wall and choking back breath as something far larger than himself looms in the magma – seeking, searching, hunting. The heat is nigh unbearable and it makes breathing feel like swallowing water. Parts of his armor were melting off – no, not melting, just starting to fray and slip off his frame, but gods did it feel like it. 

Adventuring alone was always like this. Dangerous, and advised against by the Knights, yet Thaumiel was called to it like a moth to a flame, and there was a flame he was chasing, and–

The coolness passes by him in a fleeting motion. Thaumiel thinks it similar to bells on the breeze; something like a sound that fades quickly and leaves you wanting for more. He cranes his neck towards the empty passage and sees that familiar blue light, and the shadow of a courser which carries it.

A gasped breath chokes out of his throat as Thaumiel rights himself. Standing is an effort in and of itself, but so is moving, and so is following. The light is long gone by the time he rounds the corner and so is the chill that accompanies it. He’s left standing upon brick and mortar, shivering from the heat, panting with no relief. 

He slumps back against the ruined walls, allowing his eyes the brief respite of closing. The stone is rough against his face but it’s a different sensation than heat or chill, and it helps quell the concern that’s starting to broil low in his gut. Just what was following him?

The taunting brazier of blue fire weans away after that encounter. Blue catches his eye in ways it hadn’t before. 

If not for the certainty that something had been carrying it, he’d have written it off as a fire elemental or something of the sort. He’d seen the shape, though.

Smaller. Dark. Certainly a courser. Or something pretending to be one.

The report is made after the third incident, though his higher Knights write it off as an interaction with one of the Ascendant’s followers. He wasn’t too sure anything in the wretched cult’s teachings had anything to do with blue flames, or, hell – not attempting to convert whoever crossed their path. It doesn’t sit right with Thaumiel.

The thought remains unspoken.