The forest thins long before I reach the ridge, opening into stretches of pale rock that reflect the moonlight like old bone. My legs burn, lungs scrape for breath, but I don't stop running. Not with the creatures streaking ahead like shards of midnight. Not with the bond hammering in my veins like it's trying to resurrect itself through force alone.
The night is too quiet.Too expectant.
When my boots hit the first incline of the ridge, everything in me stills. I press my palm to the ground, hoping to steady the tremor in my fingers — but the earth quivers beneath my touch as if responding.
Or remembering.
A wind cuts across the plateau, colder than the forest's air. It smells strange — metallic, scorched, faintly sweet, like burned flowers crushed underfoot. Something happened here. Something old. Something I've tried for two years to forget.
The Flame in my chest stirs.
Look.See.
I shake my head as if that could silence it, but the heat inside me only pulses harder, spreading across my ribs in a pattern too familiar to ignore. I clench my jaw and keep climbing.
By the time I reach the crest, I'm breathless for more reasons than the run.
Because I know this place.
I stand on the ridge where Kael nearly died.Where I nearly lost myself.Where the Flame was first torn open inside me and the mark branded itself into my skin like a promise — or a threat.
The hairs along my arms lift.
The creatures hover above the plateau now, wings unfurled in a slow, circling pattern. Searching. Studying. Hunting for faint remnants, invisible threads, echoes of magic spilled and half-forgotten.
I crouch behind a boulder, heart slamming against my ribs as I watch.
One of them breaks formation and descends. It lands on the ridge with a soundless thud, wings folding with uncanny precision. Up close, the armor is worse — intricate, sinuous lines running across its surface, as if the metal is alive. No visible skin. No breath. No face.
A thing forged, not born.
It kneels and presses its palm to the stone.
That's when I feel it — the ridge responding. A quiver underfoot, a ripple of heat through the air, the whisper of something long buried forcing itself upward.
The Flame inside me surges violently, punching against my ribs.Not in fear.In warning.
In recognition.
"Damn it," I breathe, swallowing panic. If the ridge is reacting, then it's reacting to one thing — the bond. The remnants of what tied Kael and me together. The mark I carry. The flame inside my chest that refuses to die, no matter how far I run.
The creature tilts its helmet toward the ground, sensing something.
Then its head snaps up — directly toward me.
I freeze.
Not even the wind moves.
A low vibration hums from its armor, vibrating the air like a held breath about to be released.
No.No, no, no.
I press myself tighter against the stone, pulse roaring in my ears. If it comes for me, I don't know if I can outrun it. And fighting it? The Flame is wrong — unstable, unpredictable. I could burn myself as easily as it. Or worse… I could draw the others.
The creature steps forward.
Two more peel away from the sky, wings slicing the air, descending like judgment.
My throat dries.
The first creature reaches the boulder.
I swallow hard. My hand starts to lift — flame licking at my palm in reflex, desperate, angry — when something shifts behind them.
A sound I haven't heard in years.
A heartbeat. Echoing.Not mine.
The ridge flares with heat. Light bursts through the cracks in the stone in a sudden, blinding surge — red-gold, violent, alive. The creatures reel back, wings expanding in shock.
And in that light…For a breath — just one — I swear I see him.
Kael.Or the shape of him.A shadow made of flame, flickering, reaching.
My mark blazes so hot I gasp.
The creatures screech — a metallic, grating sound — and scramble backward as the ridge erupts a second time, flame spiraling upward like a column reaching toward the sky.
Heat slams into me, knocking me onto the ground. My ears ring. My vision blurs. I claw at the rocks, forcing myself upright as the fire twists into something almost human-shaped before collapsing in a spray of sparks.
Silence follows.Heavy. Terrifying.
The creatures retreat slowly, regrouping in the air, hesitant now. Whatever they saw… whatever they sensed… it frightened them.
Good.I wish it didn't scare me, too.
The ridge cools. My mark dims. The world steadies.
But my heart does not.
Because that heartbeat — the one that wasn't mine — is still echoing faintly in my ribs.
Alive.Close.Calling me back to the thing I thought I'd buried.
Kael.
I press a shaking hand to the glowing mark on my wrist.
If he's alive, the world is about to rip itself open to reach him.And if he's not…
Something else is wearing his flame.
Either way, I'm out of time.