The moon hung like a blade over Thornvale, caught in a sky smeared with thin clouds. Elira stood on the edge of the forest, her back to the village, the scent of smoke and frost clinging to her cloak. Her breath plumed white in the cold air, but her skin felt hot, pulsing faintly with the same warmth that had flared in the clearing. The ember was still with her.
In her satchel, she carried only what she could: a waterskin, dried roots, flint, her father's old bone-handled knife, and the leather pouch her mother had given her in silence that morning. Inside were three smooth stones, one unnaturally warm, along with a feather the color of dying embers, and three tiny seeds shaped like teardrops.
"Protection," her mother had whispered, voice trembling. "Not against the world. Against the fire."
Elira didn't understand what that meant. But she would.
She stepped into the trees.
The village vanished behind her, swallowed by the mist rising between trunks. Each step forward felt like parting a curtain. The deeper she went, the quieter everything became. Even the birds had stopped their dawn chatter. Only the wind moved, curling through branches like breath through a sleeping beast.
The north path wasn't a real trail, just a sliver of broken ground used by poachers and wandering deer. It wound past forgotten graves, sunken hollows, and places Elira's grandfather used to say "the woods remember." He'd always spoken those words with a particular tone, half reverence, half fear.
She kept moving.
Hours passed.
The sky was turning pale when the forest changed.
Elira paused as the scent shifted. It was no longer sharp and piney. It smelled... wrong. Like burnt wood and copper.
She created a low ridge and froze.
Below her was a circle of antlers, twelve, maybe more driven into the ground in a wide ring. At the center stood a stump, scorched black. Around the circle, the snow hadn't touched the earth, and the trees leaned away from it, as if recoiling.
A ward.
But not like the ones carved into Thornvale's boundary stones. This one pulsed faintly with a reddish glow. Its runes were jagged and erratic, more like claw-marks than writing.
Elira stepped forward cautiously. As soon as the tip of her boot crossed into the ring, the hairs on her arms rose.
The air thickened.
A voice cut through it like a knife.
"You're far from safe roads, little spark."
She turned, heart slamming into her ribs.
A figure stepped from the trees tall, gaunt, wearing the deep sable coat of the Wardens. Its hem dragged the frost, stitched with thread that shimmered faintly in the half-light. His face was pale, etched with faint lines like cracked porcelain, and his eyes were a strange color neither gray nor silver, but somewhere in between.
He wasn't alone.
Two others stepped from the woods a moment later, slighter builds, masked in bone, moving like trained hounds. Warden initiates. Their armor bore the sigils of flamebinders, designed not to repel fire, but to trap it.
Elira's throat dried. "How do you know who I am?"
The leader tilted his head. "The fire speaks louder than you think. It leaves a scent. And that Kyren's glow was seen as far as the Hollow Ridge. You should have run faster."
"I'm not running," she said, drawing the knife from her belt.
That made him smile faintly, humorless.
"Brave," he said. "Or foolish. The fire always chooses ones like you. It loves desperation. Loves anger. But it doesn't love you. It only wants to use you."
Elira's grip tightened. "I didn't ask for any of this."
"Doesn't matter. You've been marked. That makes you dangerous."
The initiates moved closer, slow and deliberate.
"Come with us," the Warden said. "The Sanctum can teach you to control it."
"You mean bind me," Elira snapped. "Cage me."
He didn't deny it.
"We've seen what happens when wild embers burn unchecked. Villages reduced to ash. Forests howling with ghosts. Entire keeps swallowed in flame."
"I'm not like that," Elira said.
"Not yet," he answered. "But the fire doesn't care about your intentions. It cares about hunger. And yours is already growing."
Suddenly, she felt it deep in her ribs, a slow surge. The ember. It wasn't angry. It wasn't afraid. It was watching.
Testing.
She backed toward the edge of the ward circle, step by step. The initiates fanned out to flank her.
"Last chance," the Warden said. "Come quietly. Or burn."
Elira turned and ran.
The trees blurred past. Behind her, she heard the crack of flame-binders being drawn, short spears tipped with flickering red runes, and the hiss of alchemical fire being loosed into the air. A bolt of crackling energy ripped past her and exploded against a tree trunk. Bark splintered. Snow sizzled.
Another followed. Closer.
She darted left, nearly lost her footing, and rolled into a ravine. Her hands scraped ice and stone. The warm stone from her mother's pouch shifted in her pack, glowing now.
And then she felt it.
The fox.
A blur of orange light to her right, keeping pace through the trees.
No words this time.
Just fire.
It raced ahead of her, drawing a streak of burning blue through the dark leading her. Pulling her.
Elira followed.
Another bolt split the sky, but this one never landed. The fire peeled outward from the fox in a sweeping arc and caught it midair. The air sang as the magic twisted into sparks and vanished.
Elira broke through the final ring of trees and the world vanished in light.
She landed hard.
When her eyes cleared, she was in a grove unlike any she knew. The trees here were blackened and tall, twisted like they'd grown through flame. The air was thick with ash, yet she could breathe. Above her, the sky glimmered, not with stars, but with embers, slowly falling like snow.
The fox sat on a fallen tree, calm, luminous.
"You ran well," the Kyren said. "But you'll need to do more than run."
Elira staggered upright. "They would have taken me."
"They still will," it said. "Unless you learn."
"Learn what?"
"How to burn without breaking," the fox replied. "How to use the ember, not be used by it. The oath is not a shield. It is a promise."
Elira met its gaze, jaw tight. "Then start teaching."
The fox's eyes glowed brighter.
"The lesson begins with what you fear most. Look."
The grove shimmered.
And behind the fox, smoke began to rise, rising from Thornvale.
Elira gasped.
"No," she whispered. "No-"
The fox said nothing.
Because it wasn't a warning.
It was a vision.
Elsewhere, the Warden stood still among scorched bark and vanished prints. The girl was gone, spirited away in Kyren flame. He stared at the empty ring of antlers, then touched the runes along his coat.
"She's chosen the old path," he said.
Behind him, one of the initiates shifted uneasily. "Should we return to the Sanctum?"
The Warden's lips curled.
"No. Let her run. Let her learn. She'll come to us in time when she's seen what the fire really costs."
He looked north.
Toward war.
Toward flame.