(POV: Kael)
The light wasn't just light. It was a wound opening across the sky.
It tore upward from the cracked glass beneath our feet, searing red and gold, spiraling like blood drawn into air. I couldn't look away from her — Nyra, standing in the center of it, her hair whipped by wind that didn't exist moments before, her skin alive with the same crimson shimmer that burned the horizon.
I'd seen her touched by the Flame before. But this — this was the Flame claiming her.
"Nyra!" My voice was swallowed by the roar that rose from the earth, the sound too vast, too ancient to belong to any world I knew.
She turned toward me, eyes wide — and there, for a heartbeat, was the girl I'd first found bleeding in the ruins, the one who still believed she could outrun the curse in her veins. Her lips parted, a single word shaping against the storm.
"Kael."
Then the light flared, blinding, and she was gone.
No — not gone. Pulled. Drawn into the rift like a thread yanked free from fabric.
I lunged forward, the heat tearing through my armor, searing skin and bone alike. My hand caught the air where she'd been, and for a fraction of a second, I felt her — her pulse, her fear, her defiance — all wrapped in the furious hum of the Blood Mark.
Then it was gone, leaving nothing but silence and the taste of ash.
I fell to my knees. The ground still pulsed faintly beneath me, echoing her heartbeat, then slowing… fading.
She wasn't dead. I would've known if she were. The bond hadn't broken; it had stretched — thin as a blade's edge — across whatever lay beyond that crimson veil.
I forced myself up, vision still burning white. The air reeked of smoke and iron, and the trees around the clearing had turned to glass, every leaf frozen mid-motion.
The rift still glowed faintly, a wound that refused to close. And through it… a shadow moved.
At first, I thought it was her — until I saw the way it walked. Too slow. Too sure.
The figure stepped closer, and the air rippled. It was tall, wrapped in robes that shimmered like oil on water, the face obscured by a hood woven from light itself. But I could feel the presence beneath it — not human, not divine. Something older. Something that had waited.
"Where is she?" I demanded, drawing what remained of my blade. The metal hissed, warped, then steadied in my grip — alive with the faint echo of her power.
The figure tilted its head, almost amused. Its voice was soft and terrible all at once.
"She heard the call," it said. "And she answered. The Blood Mark belongs to the one who remembers."
"I don't care about your riddles," I snarled. "Bring her back."
"Back?" The hooded head tilted further. "You cannot return what was never yours to hold, hunter."
The last word landed like a curse.
For a moment, I saw through the light — saw the eyes hidden beneath the hood. They weren't eyes at all. They were mirrors.
And in their reflection, I saw Nyra — not as she was, but as something else. Changed. Crowned in fire.
The air snapped, and the figure began to fade.
"Wait!" I shouted. "If she's alive—"
"She burns," the voice whispered. "And soon, she will call for you."
Then it was gone. The rift sealed itself with a sound like breath drawn in reverse, and the world fell silent again.
I stood there for a long time, my hand still outstretched toward the empty air. The mark on my wrist — once dormant — now pulsed faintly with heat.
A message.
A tether.
Nyra wasn't gone.
She was becoming.
And gods help us both when she called.