Silence had a weight to it.
It settled over the ruins like a shroud, thick and cold and full of ghosts.
When I opened my eyes, the air shimmered with fading embers — the last breath of the Flame's awakening. The ground was scorched in a perfect circle around me, but I was untouched. Kael wasn't.
He lay half-buried in the soot, pale as moonlight, his chest rising in shallow, uneven pulls. The bond between us flickered in my mind like a candle struggling against the wind — there, then gone, then there again. It hurt to look at him. It hurt more not to.
The world around us wasn't quiet out of peace. It was listening.
The trees leaned inward, their bark blackened, their roots curling through the ash. Somewhere in the distance, the veil cracked again — faint, almost imperceptible, but real. Whatever I had woken, the realm had felt it.
I crawled closer to him. My hands trembled as I reached out, brushing soot from his face. The heat from my skin lingered — the Flame's residue.
He flinched.
"Don't," he rasped. His voice was raw, the edges frayed.
"Kael, I—"
"You'll burn yourself."
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream. "I think that's already happened."
His eyes opened, unfocused but searching. For me. For what I'd become.
Something in me cracked at the sight.
The bond pulsed — weak, fractured, but alive. A thread of warmth wound between us, not fire but breath. And for a fleeting heartbeat, I felt what he felt: exhaustion, pain… and awe.
"You shouldn't be alive," he whispered. "The Flame shouldn't have spared you."
"Maybe it didn't," I said. "Maybe this is what's left of me."
The air shifted, carrying with it a faint hum — the world's response, low and mournful. The ash trembled beneath us, rising like breath exhaled from the earth. I could feel it, the realm awakening, mirroring the thing burning inside me.
Kael reached for my wrist, his touch unsteady. "You're changing, Nyra."
"I know."
"Into what?"
I looked toward the horizon where the light of the veil pulsed faintly like a heartbeat.
"Into whatever the Flame remembers."