Kael didn't sleep the next night.
He sat near the village's outer wall, polishing his blade—though it was already clean. The act calmed him, helped him think. The sword had been a gift from the king himself, forged with silversteel and marked with the crest of House Vaelen: a phoenix in chains.
He remembered the oath he took at sixteen:
> "I serve crown and flame. I burn for the throne."
But now the flame felt different. It wasn't loyalty or pride that stirred in his chest. It was doubt. Doubt, and the memory of Arien's fire, soft and sad in her hands.
Suddenly, a voice broke his focus.
"You polish that thing any harder, it'll glow," Arien said from the shadows.
Kael looked up, startled, then smirked. "Didn't know you were watching."
"I wasn't." She sat down a few paces away, hugging her knees. "I just… couldn't sleep either."
They sat in silence for a while, the night wrapped in fog.
Kael finally asked, "That flame—your magic. How long have you hidden it?"
"Since I was twelve," she said. "The night my parents were burned for the same gift."
Kael's heart clenched. He knew what the enforcers did to mage-bloods. He had led raids before. But hearing it from her… made the world tilt.
"I'm sorry," he said, the words tasting like ash.
Arien looked at him, eyes sharp. "Don't be. You wear the same crest as the ones who lit the pyres."
Kael glanced at his armor, shame creeping in. "I didn't know you then."
"And if you did?" she asked.
He had no answer.
Arien stood. "There's a storm coming, Kael. I can feel it in my blood."
"I know," he said quietly. "But not all storms come to destroy."
As she walked away, Kael stared into the night, torn between the mission he was sworn to… an
d the girl who had just set his soul ablaze.