"Open your eyes," Kail hissed, voice raw like rope. "Lizz. Please. Don't you dare."
Silence came back, a wet, stupid silence that tasted like metal and regret. Lizz lay on the scorched sand, eyes half-rolled, breathing shallow like a bell with a crack. Her skin was mottled with ash and blood and orange burns that crawled like maps.
"She's so pale," Kail said, and for the first time she couldn't make it sound like a joke. "Lizz. Talk to me. If you fall, I swear to God I will…" She didn't finish. The promise unraveled in her mouth.
Aiden gripped Lizz's hand like it was the last solid thing left on the island. "She's at the edge," he said. "We pushed too far."
"We didn't have a choice," Kail snapped. "You could've pulled her out earlier."
"I was busy not dying!" Aiden's words were a whip and an apology. He wasn't looking at her. He couldn't look at her, because if he looked at her he would see the bleeding he couldn't stop.
Lizz coughed, a single small sound, and for a second Kail felt like salvation had come back to them. Then Lizz's fingers splayed limp.
"She tried," Vordi rumbled, the serpent's voice low and cracked from the heat. "Tried to burn the world. Tried to become fire. It ate her instead."
"She didn't fail," Kail said, but her voice sounded small. "She did something. It just… it just didn't hold."
"Power is strange," Aiden murmured. "Not always what you think. Not always what you want."
"No kidding," Kail said. "Great comforting insight, Professor Mood."
Lizz whimpered. The whimper cut through them like a knife. Kail grabbed Lizz's hand again. "Hold on. If you die here I'm going to drag you back myself. I have opposable thumbs and bad attitudes. Trust me."
"She needs time," Aiden said. "Time heals. If we can keep her breathing, keep her warm, she'll…"
"She'll what? Wake up and be fine?" Kail snapped. "That's not how this goes. We need to do something now."
Outside, the jungle still screamed and creatures clicked like teeth. The colossus had not left. It stomped and tore at trees in a bored rage, testing patience.
"We need shelter," Vordi said. "Shade. Water. Cool her burns. Bandage her. Keep the blood from going out."
"Water?" Kail laughed, a terrible, wet sound. "Where are we gonna find water that's not boiling with lava juice?"
"There's a spring on the western ridge," Aiden said quietly. "We can get her there."
"You're sure?" Kail asked.
"I can carry her," Aiden said. He sounded exhausted. His face looked carved from marble and cotton. "But we move fast."
"Good," Kail said. "Move. Move like you don't have a yesterday."
They moved like ghosts, dragging Lizz across sand that scalded the soles of their feet. Vordi stayed low, coils rubbing the ground, wings tucked. The monsters trailed like unhappy weather, but the colossus stayed near, as if to make certain the island's law was obeyed.
Aiden's breath came short, a ragged sound that felt like an insult. Kail watched his hands. They shook when he adjusted his grip. She felt the trade: each step forward took a piece of them and left a hollow.
"Talk to me," Kail panted, watching Lizz. "Tell me something dumb. Sing a song. Remember that dumb video we watched where the cat did the spin thing. Do it now. I need you to, like, exist."
Lizz's lips moved, a tiny sound. It might've been the cat song, or nothing. Kail laughed, all in a sound that bordered on a sob.
They reached the western ridge. The spring bubbled like a secret laughing thing, steam curling into the air. It was hot, but not lava hot. It was water. It was something real.
Vordi dipped her snout, tested it, hissed, and then gently poured water over Lizz's skin with her coils. Where the water touched, Lizz's burns steamed and hissed. The steam smelled like iron and clean things and loss.
"She needs cloth," Aiden said, voice small. "Something to soak and hold. We need to wrap…"
Kail tore at her shirt and the hem of Aiden's cloak until they had strips of fabric. They pressed them against Lizz's chest and wrapped, hands trembling, fingers sticky. It was messy and not sterile and it was probably full of who knew what germs, but it was better than nothing.
"You're not gonna die here," Kail vowed, more to herself than to Lizz. "You can't. I won't let you."
Aiden's eyes softened, a crack in his armor. "You keep saying that."
"Because it's true," Kail said. "Also because you're useless without her."
"Watch your mouth," Aiden said, then he swallowed and managed something like a smile. "I'm not useless. I just like brooding."
"Brooding doesn't patch burns," Kail said.
Time passed like a throat. Lizz slept, between breaths, like an animal wounded. Kail kept talking to her. Stories, stupid memories, bad jokes, fragments of movies. Mostly nonsense: "Do you remember the time you put salt in the sugar jar? God you were dramatic. You cried because your coffee tasted like an ocean. That was hilarious." Kail's voice broke somewhere in the middle of a sentence.
Aiden sat on a jagged rock, head bowed. "I can sense… the power in her is different now," he said, finally. "It tried to become itself, only it burned because the way it was called wasn't the way it needed to be."
"Explain in English," Vordi rumbled.
"It… it's not selfish," Aiden said. "It isn't simply about her. That's the point. The force wants direction. Lizz tried to pull it inward, to make it her, to consume it. It responds to intention, yes, but sometimes intention has to be given outward. It wants to be used. It wants to be shaped."
"Used on others?" Kail asked. The idea felt foreign and a little like a betrayal of everything Lizz had attempted.
"Maybe," Aiden said. "Maybe her blood birthright isn't solo. Maybe it's tethered to giving, to changing. If the power is a river, she tried to drink from it. But maybe she can only open the channel that sends it to others."
"You're being poetic," Kail muttered. "Stop. Use normal words."
"Then think of it like a mirror," Aiden said. "She can reflect change, not become the change." He tapped his jaw, unhelpful. "This makes my head ache."
Kail slid down, back against a rock, and breathed. "So you're saying she can't turn herself into a phoenix. She can only… make someone else a phoenix? That's oddly specific and also horribly inconvenient."
"That is what I'm proposing," Aiden said. "And I have no idea if it's true."
"Great," Kail said. "Fantastic. So the only thing that will save us is if she can somehow bless Vordi and make her a bird. Because I don't really want to ride a serpent into the sky, even if she does look majestic." Kail forced a grin that hurt.
"Don't joke about getting eaten mid flight," Vordi said, and it was the smallest of threats and the largest of comforts.
"Okay, so plan," Aiden said, standing up like he'd been sleepwalking out of a dream. "We keep her alive. We buy time. We fight the monsters when they come, try to draw them away. We need to find out more about how the power passes."
"How do you pass power?" Kail asked. "Like a sandwich? 'Hey here, have this bit of flame, don't burn the bread.'"
"Stop." Aiden's patience was thin. "Look, we can't be flippant about this. She nearly died trying to force it. The power's fragile right now. If it's to move, it needs a focus other than her."
Kail looked down at Lizz's face, at the small rise and fall of breath. "So we… we test it?"
"We should test small things first," Aiden said. "Small. Non life threatening. If she…" He stopped, as if the sentence balanced on an edge.
Kail nodded. "Okay. Little things. Make a leaf burn blue. Turn a pebble warm. Make Vordi's scales glint brighter. Don't make me watch her try to become a burning sun ever again."
"Agreed," Aiden said. "We start small. Then escalate."
They practiced in fractured shifts: Lizz awake for ten minutes, then asleep for the rest. Each time she woke, they fed her water, warmed her with blankets, held her hand and said nonsense. Each time she tried, the power flickered like a candle in wind and coughed.
"Feel anything?" Kail asked after the third attempt. Lizz's brow furrowed. She pressed her hand to a leaf. For a moment the leaf smoked, not burned, and then cooled. A faint shimmer fluttered along Vordi's scales where the leaf hovered.
"That's something," Aiden whispered.
"It's tiny," Kail said. "But it's not nothing."
"Small changes matter," Aiden said. "If she can affect the outside, then there is hope we can direct the gift."
"Okay, so we need to practice. We need to build the… channel?" Kail made a face. "I hate sounding like a ritual leader. This is embarrassing."
....