Ashwind stank of smoke and salt.
The wind scraped dust across the cracked roads, whispering through hollow lanterns and rusted bells. The sun, a molten disc in the late sky, turned everything the color of old blood. High above the rooftops, three black kites circled like omens. Xiu Xinyi didn't notice them.
She was too busy burning.
Not outwardly—her skin wasn't aflame—but something inside her chest felt wrong, like hot coals under her ribs. The pain had woken her again, pulling her from a dream that wasn't hers.
Or maybe it was.
> "Let them burn," the voice had whispered. Not from outside, but from her own throat. Her voice, but older. Stronger. Cruel.
She sat on the roof of the shrine dormitory, knees pulled to her chest, watching the last of the sun disappear behind the Sulfire Peaks. Down below, the other orphans were inside for evening meal. She hadn't told anyone about the dreams. Or the voice. Or the way the scar on her back had started glowing faintly in the dark.
At first, she thought it was fever. Or madness. Or the curse of being born under a comet moon.
But the dreams were getting clearer now. A city with twin towers made of obsidian. A sword of light buried in a lake of fire. A face—golden-eyed, bloodstained—smiling just before the world shattered.
And fire. Always fire.
She rubbed the scar on her back through her shirt. It felt warm. Wing-shaped, they'd told her when she was little. Burned into her when she was just a baby—she'd been found that way at the shrine gate, screaming, wrapped in silk and ash.
> "A bad omen," the priestess Ema used to say. "She came from fire, and fire leaves nothing behind."
That was thirteen years ago. Now, Xinyi was seventeen, and she still had no idea who she was, or why she felt like she was only half-awake in her own body.
A sudden gust of wind knocked over a nearby prayer lantern. She flinched, heartbeat racing.
The flame inside the lantern hadn't gone out.
In fact—it flared brighter. It rose, licked the air, and twisted. Not like normal fire. It moved like it saw her.
She stared, frozen. The flame tilted slightly, almost like a bow. Then—it spoke.
Not in words, but in feeling: a fierce heat in her heart, and one word branded in her mind—
> "Rise."
And then, in the far distance—far beyond the shrine gates and city walls—a pillar of fire erupted into the evening sky, bright enough to cast shadows in every direction. A shriek followed—a long, echoing cry, not human, not animal.
She didn't know how, but she knew exactly what it was.
> The Phoenix had returned.
And it remembered her.
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