My power is protected high atop a fiery mountain.
Message on the mural
The Fire Shrine is a shrine built to house the Fire Mirror in Final Fantasy IX, located on the Lost Continent in an active volcano. The party split into four teams of two to tackle all four shrines simultaneously.
Freya and Amarant are sent to the Fire Shrine where they encounter the Fire Guardian. After they defeat the guardian they release the Fire Seal, thus allowing access to the world of Terra via Shimmering Island.
Behind the scenes[]
The shrines refer to the elemental shrines from the early Final Fantasy series where crystals were housed.
Data hacking shows that there are many gaps in the numerical sequence of battle formations and monster IDs, showing that many battle formations and monsters were deleted prior to the final version. In addition to many more, three missing monster IDs appear around the "Earth Guardian", making one suspect that in the original version the player was to fight all four of the guardians instead of only one (in the final game, the other three are defeated via cut-scenes, including Wind Guardian/Tiamat). Design artwork for these other three guardians is known, as well as for deleted locations, which would probably have been where they were fought.