CHAPTER ONE: CORVANE BREATHES IN ASH
Corvane had started smelling like rain and rust again.
Tonight, it smelled like ash.
She noticed it the moment she stepped onto the balcony—the faint sting in her lungs, the way the air felt heavier, unwilling to move.
The city stretched beneath her in jagged silhouettes, towers blinking red and white like watchful eyes.
Her fire stirred uneasily.
Not eager. Not violent.
Uneasy.
That alone unsettled her more than pain ever had.
She pressed her palm to the railing.
The metal should have warmed under her touch. It always did. Instead, it stayed cold—dead cold.
Something was wrong.
Down below, a pedestrian stopped in the middle of the street and looked up, confusion painted across his face.
Then another. Then another. One by one, people paused, listening.
The city made a sound.
A deep, subsonic groan that vibrated through concrete and bone.
Windows rattled.
Car alarms screamed.
Her fire surged instinctively, flaring beneath her skin like a reflex she couldn't suppress—but the moment it did, the sound stopped.
Silence crashed down.
Too complete. Too sudden.
Her phone buzzed.
No notification. No call.
Just a single line of text burning onto the screen as if it had been waiting.
THEY'VE RECOGNIZED YOU.
Her breath hitched.
Before she could react, every light in Corvane went out.
In the darkness, her fire ignited on its own—
and something far beneath the city ignited with it.
Emergency power restored parts of the city within minutes.
Not the underground.
She descended anyway.
The entrance to the Hollow Grid wasn't marked on any map—just a rusted maintenance door behind a condemned station, chained shut and stamped with warnings no one had updated in decades.
She burned the chain away with a thought.
The fire felt reluctant.
Like it didn't want to be there.
The stairwell spiraled downward, each step echoing too loudly, too long.
Her footsteps felt intrusive, like she was trespassing inside a body that wasn't hers.
The deeper she went, the colder it became.
Her fire dimmed.
Panic crept in.
Anger had always answered her.
Even when it hurt. Even when it punished her.
Now it pulled inward, shrinking, as if afraid to be seen.
She reached the chamber.
Vast.
Circular.
Wrong.
The walls were scorched with symbols—layers upon layers of burn-marks, overlapping, repeating.
Not random.
Ritualistic.
She staggered forward, heart pounding.
"I've never done this," she whispered.
What's happening.
The air shifted.
A voice rose—not from behind her, not ahead, but everywhere.
"You did not begin the fire," it said.
"You were chosen because you survived it."
The lights exploded overhead.
Darkness swallowed everything.
Her fire vanished.
Not suppressed.
Gone.
Something wrapped around her wrist—cold, solid, deliberate.
And whispered her name.
She screamed—
but the Hollow Grid swallowed the sound like it had been waiting for it.
She woke restrained.
Not bound by metal or rope—but by force. Invisible pressure pinned her to a slab of black stone etched with glowing veins that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Her fire was still absent.
Panic turned feral.
Footsteps echoed.
Figures emerged from the shadows—five of them, cloaked, faces obscured by shifting light. Their presence made her skin crawl.
"You weren't supposed to come here yet," one said.
"Yet?" she spat. "You took my fire."
Another corrected her calmly. "We returned it to where it belongs."
A screen flickered to life above her.
Images flashed—cities burning across decades, centuries.
Different people.
Same fire.
Same passion.
Same glow in their eyes.
"You were never the first," the voice continued.
"And you will not be the last."
The oldest figure stepped forward.
"Corvane was built on a containment system," they said.
"A city designed to feed on fire—on people like you."
Her breath caught.
"That's impossible."
A smile curved beneath the hood.
"Then why do you think the city reacts every time you lose control?"
The war you fought was not relevant but this is.
The slab beneath her pulsed.
She tried to keep you off from it.
She hid you but fate just can't be denied.
Deep below, something answered.
The screen changed—
showing another girl, burning, screaming—
alive.
Active.
Identical.
She escaped—but escape felt wrong.
The Hollow Grid released her too easily, like a mouth letting go of prey it knew would return.
Her fire came back in fragments, unstable, flickering unpredictably.
Corvane above was unraveling.
Sinkholes.
Blackouts.
People collapsing from unexplained heat shock. Authorities blamed infrastructure failure.
She knew better.
Her phone vibrated again.
You saw her.
Her hands shook.
So did I, once.
They met at the edge of the city, where Corvane bled into abandoned industrial ruins.
The other woman stood waiting.
Her fire didn't spill outward like hers. It stayed tight, coiled, disciplined.
Controlled.
"You're the second vessel," she whispered.
The woman laughed softly.
"No," she replied.
I refuse to be a pet to whatever fetish y'all have going on here. She sparked
"I'm the one who lived long enough to understand the price."
The ground beneath them trembled.
A裂 opened in the earth, glowing faintly—not with fire, but with something darker.
"Corvane is finally waking up," the woman said.
"And it wants both of us."
From the裂, a sound rose—
not a roar,
but a voice, speaking in unison.
The sky fractured.
Not metaphorically.
Reality itself split above Corvane, light bending inward toward a single point over the city's heart. People fell to their knees.
Screens across the city lit up with the same message:
IGNITION IMMINENT .
Sirens wailed.
She and the other woman stood at the edge of the裂, fire blazing between them—similar, yet violently opposed.
"You can stop this," the woman said.
"But only if you let Corvane finish what it started."
"And what is that?" she demanded.
The ground opened wider.
A colossal shape stirred below—formed of shadow, stone, and ember.
The truth slammed into her.
Corvane wasn't a city.
It was a prison.
And she—
She was the key.
The thing beneath the city spoke at last.
CHOOSE!