The wind carried whispers.
They sifted through the trees like smoke, curling around black trunks and frostbitten branches, brushing cold against Elira's cheek as she stood at the edge of the clearing. Her breath coiled visibly in front of her, the air still and waiting. She wasn't sure what had drawn her here, only that the forest had called. Not in words. In something older than speech. In the language of memory and fire and bone.
The ground beneath her boots crackled with a thin crust of ice. It was nearly the end of Frostwane, the longest winter in a generation, and yet the snow hadn't lifted. No birdsong. No distant howl of wolves. The silence pressed around her, close as skin.
"Elira!" someone hissed behind her.
She didn't turn. She knew the voice.
Tavren, her younger brother, stood a few paces back, wrapped in his too-thin cloak, a scowl scrunched between his brows. "Come back! You're not supposed to be this deep. What if a Warden sees us?"
"Do you hear it?" she asked quietly.
Tavren stopped moving. "Hear what?"
She let her eyes close. The wind shifted again, and this time, it did speak. A whisper curled in the branches, not in her ears, but in her bones. Her name, spoken not as a question, but as a truth.
"Elira."
Her eyes snapped open. In the clearing ahead, a glimmer.
A pulse of orange flame moved in the shadows. But it was not fire. Not quite.
A fox stepped forward from beneath the trees. Its fur shimmered, not with light but with a glow, like starlight trapped beneath its skin. Its coat was a pale gold tinged with flickers of flame at the tail and paws. The forest light bent around it, and yet it cast no shadow.
Elira's breath caught. She had heard the stories. Old ones, whispered in secret, ones the elders insisted were only for children: of spirit beasts who watched the world behind the veil, of foxfire that led the lost to safety or ruin.
But none had ever claimed to see one.
The fox looked at her with eyes like live coals. Not wild, but steady. Knowing.
"Elira!" Tavren shouted again, voice cracking. "What is that?"
She didn't answer. Couldn't.
The fox stepped closer. Its paws left faint trails of fire where they touched the ground, burning without smoke. Elira's heart thundered, not in fear, but recognition.
"You've come at last," the fox said.
Its voice was not made of sound. It bloomed in her mind, like a dream she couldn't shake.
Tavren screamed. "It talked! Did you hear that?!"
Elira gave the slightest nod, eyes locked with the fox's. "I heard it."
"The balance frays," the fox said. "Corruption seeps from crown to root. The oath must be reignited, or all will burn."
Elira swallowed, lips dry. "What oath?"
"The Foxfire Oath. Given long ago, when flame was young, and truth still had teeth." The fox's ears tilted back slightly. "You are her blood. The fire calls to you."
She took a half-step forward before she realized her feet had moved. "You're saying I'm supposed to… fix something?"
"I say only this: the world is bleeding. And you, Elira Thornvale, carry the last ember."
She blinked. "How do you know my name?"
The fox said nothing.
Then, just as suddenly as it had come, it vanished; no blaze, no flare, no puff of smoke. One blink, and the clearing was empty.
Where it had stood, the earth smoldered. Blackened leaves spiraled in slow motion to the ground. And in their center, a shape: a single spiral of flame, still flickering faintly in the snow.
Elira knelt beside it, drawn by some gravity she couldn't explain. Her hand hovered over the scorch mark and the heat reached for her, curling upward like a living thing.
Tavren grabbed her shoulder. "Don't touch it! We should go back to the village. Right now. This isn't right."
But she didn't move.
She lowered her fingers, brushing the edge of the ember.
The world tilted.
A rush of heat surged up her arm, not painful, but pure, like sunlight breaking through storm clouds. The warmth flooded her chest, her head, her spine, and in that instant, a vision exploded behind her eyes: fire spilling over mountaintops, cities drowning in black vines, a throne of bone wrapped in gold and always, the fox. Watching.
She gasped and fell back, her hand steaming in the cold air.
"Elira?!"
"I'm fine," she breathed, though she wasn't. Something inside her had changed. A lock undone. A gate opened.
And whatever lay on the other side was awake.
She looked up. The forest had returned to stillness, but now, nothing felt the same. The wind had a shape. The shadows had eyes. The air whispered with unseen movement.
The fox was gone.
But its flame remained.
And Elira understood, in that moment, her life was no longer her own.