Before the factions, there was a name.
Not a title. Not a rank. A name that was chosen — by something that had been watching long enough to understand what names meant.
The three peoples who found the First Ember each believed they had kept the secret. Each believed the other two had forgotten. None of them considered a fourth possibility:
that the secret had been keeping them.
Every Idol that was ever sealed. Every mask that was ever placed. Every tribe that ever lit a fire and called it theirs.
It was watching. It was counting. It was building something from the record that none of them knew was being kept.
The census was never for the factions.
It was always a letter.
The name at the bottom of that letter has not been spoken aloud since the Sundering. Not because it was forbidden.
Because the one who carries it has been waiting for someone to read far enough to find it.
You have read far enough.
The name will be spoken in Series 2.