Kael
For a moment, I think I'm seeing a ghost.
The air still hums from the explosion that tore the sky apart. The scent of scorched stone and rain hangs heavy, and in the center of it all—she's there. Nyra. Kneeling in the ashes, her hair a halo of smoke and ember.
The bond screams through me, so fierce it almost drives me to my knees. I thought I'd lost her. For days, I felt nothing but emptiness, the hollow where she used to burn. But now she's everywhere. Her heartbeat drums through my veins, alive, wild, different.
"Nyra," I whisper.
She looks up, and it's her eyes that stop me—still hers, still fierce and defiant, but threaded with something ancient. Fire dances beneath her skin, too bright to be human. She doesn't speak at first, only studies me like she's trying to remember what I am.
The world feels wrong around her. The clouds twist, the ground breathes heat. The Forsaken Flame didn't just mark her—it rewrote her.
"You shouldn't have followed me," she says finally, her voice both Nyra's and not.
"I didn't," I rasp. "You came back."
She flinches, just barely, and that small crack in her armor nearly undoes me. I take a step closer, then another. The air between us shimmers, pulsing with dangerous warmth.
"I thought I'd lost you," I admit. The words scrape out like confession. "I buried you with my hands."
Her expression softens for a heartbeat, and I see the woman I knew—the one who laughed at danger and hid her pain behind sarcasm and stubborn pride. But then it's gone, replaced by the weight of something divine.
"You did lose me," she says quietly. "What came back isn't what you buried."
Lightning rips across the sky. The ground trembles beneath us. In the distance, I see the world tearing—veins of fire spreading through forests, rivers boiling as reality bends. The barrier between realms is bleeding, and the power thrumming in her chest is the reason why.
"Nyra, the Flame—"
"It's not just the Flame," she interrupts. "It's me now. It's us. The bond… it tied more than just our souls."
The words hit me like a blade. The bond flares again, burning hot enough that I can feel her pulse inside my mind. My knees nearly give. I see flashes of her—her pain, her terror, her awakening. The moment the Flame accepted her. The moment she accepted it back.
"Then we end this together," I say.
She steps closer, and for the first time since her return, she smiles. It's faint, sad, and it feels like goodbye.
"No, Kael," she murmurs. "Together isn't what this world needs."
Before I can answer, the earth splits behind her. Fire rises, forming a gate of molten light that hums with her power. And in that instant, I understand—she's not just returning. She's choosing to burn a path the rest of us can't follow.
Her hand brushes mine, heat searing my skin but leaving no mark.
"When it's over," she whispers, "remember who I was before the fire."
And then she steps into the flame.