The light doesn't fade. It grows.It swallows the ruins, the trees, the stars. It fills my mouth and my lungs until I'm choking on it, until I can't tell where the fire ends and I begin.
I fall to my knees, gasping. The sigil pulses beneath me like a heartbeat. I dig my nails into the earth, trying to anchor myself, but the power drags at me, pulling from inside my bones.
You carried me once, the voice murmurs. You thought you could bury me. But you and I, little flame—we were never separate things.
"I won't let you take me again," I whisper, though my hands are already trembling with light.
The forest around me is alive now, trees bending inward, their bark splitting under the heat. I can feel the air thinning, the ground humming. My magic, or its will—no longer sure which.
And then I see it. A figure in the flame. A reflection—or maybe a memory. She looks like me, but older, hollowed. Eyes of molten gold, lips cracked from whispering spells that should have never been spoken.
"You're not real," I tell her.The figure smiles. "Neither are you."
The heat bursts outward, and for a heartbeat, I am back there—at the fall. The screaming sky, the scent of iron, Kael's blood on my hands. I see the moment I chose to unleash the fire, to break the bond, to save him by damning us both.
The voice twists, soft as silk. "He still lives. But not as you remember."
My heart stutters. The world flickers. The flames recede, leaving me alone in the ruin, the sigil burned into the ground—and into my palm.
I stare at the mark. It glows faintly, veins of fire beneath the skin. The bond is gone, but something else has taken its place. Something older. Hungrier.
The voice fades, replaced by silence.But I know what it meant.
If Kael is alive… then the world isn't done with me yet.
I wrap my cloak tighter and rise, the cold night air kissing sweat from my skin. Somewhere beyond the forest, beyond the mountains, there's movement—magic stirring again after years of quiet.
And for the first time in a long while, I feel something almost like fear.Not of death. Not of the Flame.But of what waits when I find him.