I smelled fire before I saw the glow.
Not smoke, but the sharp, sweet scent of burning thread-oil - something I hadn't smelled since the old northern temples, where they'd burn ceremonial weaves to honor the fallen. It wasn't a natural fire. It was focused. Controlled. Alive.
I crested the rise of a black dune and stopped dead.
The basin below pulsed with heat. The kind that shimmered across your vision and made the air bend in strange ways. At its center stood a girl.
She wasn't moving. Not really. Just standing there - arms extended, head tilted up toward a sky that couldn't hear her.
And she was singing.
There were no words. Just tone and rhythm, something wild and winding that reminded me of wind chimes and wolves and a temple bell tolling in the middle of a storm. Her voice had no business being beautiful out here in a place like this. But it was.
And the fire moved with it.
Dozens of narrow flames curled around her like serpents, coiling and rising and flaring outward with every shift in her pitch. Some burned blue. Others orange or white. One flickered pure gold. Not one of them touched her skin.
I didn't dare breathe.
She sang with her eyes closed, and the Threads around her sang too - fiery, flickering strands trailing from her fingers, her shoulders, her bare heels where they touched the cracked ground. Bronze. Crimson. Even strands of smoky black flame-touched Threads, vibrating with some elemental force I didn't recognize.
She wasn't manipulating them. She was them.
The Wastes hadn't just accepted her. They obeyed her.
She stopped suddenly. The air around her stilled like someone had snuffed out a breath from the world itself. The last not hung, slow to fade. Even the ash in the wind paused.
Her eyes snapped open.
Amber. Unblinking. Ancient in away that made the rest of her seem like a lie.
"You're late," she said.
I froze.
"What?"
"I felt you an hour ago." Her voice was clipped. Not unkind, but sharpened like the edge of a whetstone. "You walked wide. Circling. Why?"
"I - wasn't sure if you were... real."
A long silence.
Then: "You're not the first."
That wasn't the answer I expected.
"I've seen three before you," she continued. "Only one left alive."
My pulse spiked. "What happened to the other two?"
"They tried to take what wasn't meant for them." She turned away, walking through the burned ring of fire without flinching. "The Threads aren't tools. They're memories. Living ones."
"You control them."
"No." She stopped again. "I listen. They listen back. That's different."
She didn't sound like she was boasting. She sounded like she was repeating something she'd been told many times and still wasn't sure she believed.
"What's your name." I asked.
Alaryn Vei.
The girl who turned back the Bleeding Sea with nothing but voice and threadfire - if the stories were true. The girl who burned an entire cathedral to silence the memory of a name. The girl who didn't answer to any Threadbearer Circle or school.
They called her unbound. Untethered.
She looked back at me now and nodded slowly.
"You're Cael."
"How do you know that?"
"The Wastes said your name." Her expression didn't change, but i saw something flicker behind her eyes. Recognition - or maybe caution. "They say names when they accept someone."
"And if they don't accept you?"
She turned her hand palm-up. A thread of fire leapt from the ground and coiled her wrist like a serpent.
"Then they burn you."
I exhaled slowly.
Alaryn walked closer. Her feet made no sound. She stopped just within arm's reach, eyes narrowing.
"Your Thread is different," she said.
"Silver."
"Old."
She tilted her head slightly, inspecting me the way one might inspect a dangerous relic.
"They haven't shown you much yet."
"No. Just... fragments."
"Good," she said. "Too much too fast, and you break."
I wanted to ask her how she'd learn all this. Who had taught her, if anyone. But there was a pressure to her presence that made me hesitate - like speaking too soon would unravel the moment.
Instead I asked, "Why are you here?"
She looked around the basin. At the scorched rock. The glowing Threads. The blackened wind.
"I'm listening," she said.
"To what?"
She closed her eyes. "To the Wastes. They're not dead. They're dreaming."
That made something cold shiver in my spine.
Alaryn turned and walked back toward the center of the basin. The flames followed her, bending toward her with each step like flowers drawn to light. She didn't look back when she said:
"They dream of us."
And for a moment, I wasn't sure if she meant me and her, or the Threadbearers in general - or something even older.
I started to follow. Something in me - Thread or instinct - told me I had to.
But just as I stepped into the basin, she raised a hand without turning around.
"Nor further."
I stopped immediately.
"The Threads around me aren't tame. You haven't earned their trust."
"They have trust?"
"They remember," she said. "And memory doesn't forgive easily."
A pulse of heat rippled out from her feet. The edge of it made my skin prickle, though I stood meters away.
Then she said, "Go west."
"Why?"
"Because the Threads want you there."
She opened her eyes again, locking onto mine like a blade she hadn't drawn yet.
"And if you stay here, I'll burn you down to your name."
There was no anger in her voice. No threat. Just... certainty.
I nodded slowly.
Then I turned.
And I walked west.
But I didn't forget her song.
Or the way the Threads bent to her voice like worshippers to a god.