The village had no name.
Or if it did, no one remembered it.
Just a cluster of wooden homes clinging to the edge of the old forest, half-forgotten by the kingdom that claimed to protect it. No walls. No soldiers. No Flameguard. Only farmers, mothers, and children hoping the monsters stayed farther north.
They didn't.
Kael arrived just before nightfall.
He hadn't meant to. His path had turned here without thinking, as if something inside him remembered a road he'd never walked. The village was quiet when he passed the first fence. Not the stillness of peace — the stillness of fear.
Then he saw the tracks.
Clawed. Deep. Burned into the dirt like hot iron had kissed the earth.
Not natural. Not recent.
"Don't bother the man, Elin."
Kael looked up. A woman stood on a porch nearby, cradling a child. Her voice was tired, but her eyes narrowed with recognition — not of his face, but of his silence.
The girl beside her tugged her sleeve. "But he's not from here. Maybe he knows—"
"I said go inside."
The door shut.
Kael didn't blame her.
That night, the beast came.
It crawled from the woods like a shadow leaking from the treetops — not quite solid, not quite real. A long body of smoke and bone, its joints twitching unnaturally. Its mouth split too wide, lined with flame instead of teeth.
Kael woke before it reached the homes.
He stood between the beast and the village, eyes dull and steady.
The thing snarled, heat rippling from its breath. It charged.
Kael didn't move.
The first claw swiped toward him.
He caught it with his bare hand.
The fire flared. The creature shrieked. Not in pain — in recognition.
Kael's body lit up with ember veins. Not flame. Not human. Something in between. He shoved the beast back and stepped forward.
"I know what made you," he whispered.
The thing lunged again. Kael didn't step aside.
The flames surged.
For a moment, it wasn't Kael standing there — it was Solvane, or something like her. A shape inside his fire. A memory made flesh.
The beast shrieked and cracked apart, vanishing into smoke and cinders.
Ash drifted.
Kael stood in the silence, arms lowered, breathing even.
Behind him, a small gasp.
The girl from earlier — Elin — had stepped outside.
She stared up at him, wide-eyed, trembling but not afraid.
"You… you're the fire prince, aren't you?"
Kael turned slowly. The hood still covered most of his face, but his eyes caught the starlight — molten, weary, ancient.
"I'm no prince," he said quietly.
The girl didn't flinch. "But you helped us."
"I burned a ghost," he muttered. "That's not the same as saving anyone."
"But no one else would've stopped it."
A pause.
"…Thank you."
She stepped back inside.
Kael remained in the cold wind a moment longer, watching the stars.
One of them pulsed red — just for a moment.
A god watching. Or a memory burning.
He walked away before he could decide which.