Part One: The Truth in Her Flame
Location: A ruined sanctuary in the outskirts of Thalum — moonlight piercing through shattered stained glass. Hadi and Max sit alone on broken steps, their siblings nearby, asleep. Only silence remains now.
Max sat hunched forward, elbows on his knees, fingers loosely tangled in his dark curls. His gaze stayed fixed on the floor, like answers might be written in the dust.
Hadi broke the silence.
"You hate me now, huh?"
Max didn't look at her. "No. I just don't know who you are anymore."
She snorted softly, a flash of her old humor—but it vanished as quickly as it came.
A faint, pulsing pink light sparked at her fingertips, crackling like a heartbeat.
"Yeah… me neither. Not since what I saw."
His eyes flicked toward her. "Then tell me."
She hesitated. For once, her energy—normally bright, playful, untamed—dimmed. As though it was afraid of what she might say next.
"It happened near the Veil… during that last mission at the Thalum border. You remember the one with the disappearing cliffs?"
Max nodded slowly.
"I slipped through," she said. "Just for a second. A crack in the world. I thought I'd blinked. But it felt like hours. And in there…"
She shivered. Her voice dropped.
"I saw us. You. Grim. Even Sparks. We were all there—but wrong. Empty. Like echoes. Burning… but the fire wasn't alive. It was just going through the motions."
Max stared at her now. Quietly. Fully.
"Then this voice spoke. A woman—I think. I didn't see her. I just felt her. Her flame was… pink, like mine, but cold. Like it had forgotten how to feel. She said we were 'out of alignment.' That the Guardians had already failed. That someone was rewriting the Flame."
"I didn't leave because I was scared. I left because I couldn't unsee it. Because I started noticing things. Glitches. Whispers. Shadows with no source."
Max's hands clenched slowly.
"You could've told us."
"And risk sounding insane?" she snapped, then paused. "Sorry. I just… I had to figure it out first. Alone."
A long silence. Then—
"You done being alone now?" Max asked, quiet but firm.
She glanced at him. The pink glow in her fingers warmed. "Yeah… I'm done."
He nodded, just once.
"Then let's fix the Flame. Together."
She laughed—a tired, crooked little thing. "You and me versus cosmic corruption, huh?"
"Better odds than sparring with Grim."
They both chuckled.