They buried the last of the warmth beneath a tangle of ash and root.
Evelyn stood silent over the shallow trench where they'd wrapped the old herbalist's body in what remained of her smoke-stained linens. The woman had fled the fires with them—only to be struck by a falling beam before the forest swallowed their escape.
Torren said a few words. Evelyn said none.
The forest was too still.
She hadn't heard birds since the fire. No insects, no rustle of fur in the underbrush. Just the wind whispering in strange patterns, like it remembered too much.
And somewhere beneath it, the song.
Faint now. As if it waited.
That night, she dreamed again.
The field was wider now. Filled with soot-flecked poppies and white flame licking through long-dead trees. And in the center stood the silver-eyed woman.
"Child of embers," she said, her voice echoing as though sung from the bottom of a well. "Why do you hesitate?"
"I don't know what you are," Evelyn said.
"I am what was broken. What you now carry." The woman's eyes gleamed like molten moons. "And you are hollow no longer."
She woke with her palm pressed over her heart. The shard she'd taken—the core—burned with a slow, patient heat. Not painful. Not yet.
But changing.
The following morning, they found what remained of the southern Warden post.
Its warding stone had been shattered and the ground was scorched black, cracked like dried blood. The Warden's armor lay in a heap, his staff snapped clean in half. But Evelyn saw something Torren didn't.
The glow.
Buried beneath the ash, pulsing faintly, half-crushed beneath the Warden's body—a fractured core. Its light was dimming.
Torren approached, hesitated. "We should leave it. It's spent."
"No," Evelyn said, without knowing why. "It's not."
She stepped forward, drawn to it like kindling to flame.
The shard whispered. Not in words, but emotion. Grief. Memory. Duty.
Her fingers closed around the stone before Torren could stop her.
It flared.
A scream—not hers—ripped through the clearing. Not pain, but something ancient leaving the world in one last breath. Evelyn staggered back, and the shard slid into her chest—not piercing, not burning—sinking, as though it belonged there.
Torren stared.
"Evelyn. What did you—"
Then came the growl.
Low, warbling, unnatural. From the treeline.
Two Echoed emerged—smaller than the others, but faster, bone-armored and twitching as if sensing prey.
Evelyn stepped between Torren and them without thinking.
The core burned brighter.
And her vision shimmered—not with fear, but clarity.
One of the Echoed lunged.
Evelyn moved—too fast, too fluid. She sidestepped and struck with her palm, and the creature shattered.
The other hissed and fled into the woods.
Torren grabbed her shoulder. "That's not possible. That's not what the First Surge is supposed to do."
She looked down at her hand, then at him.
"I don't think I'm doing it right," she said softly. "I think… I didn't wait."
She turned her face toward the trees. The song was louder now. And beneath it, something else—breathing. Like the forest itself was alive and watching.
The Hollow Flame had been lit.
And it would not go out.