Echoes of Flame
The glowing runes pulsed in the stones around Elira like a heartbeat.
Not hers.
Older. Deeper.
She pressed her palm to the earth, and a whisper moved through the ground—like voices through stone, memories woven into the roots of the forest itself.
Then the world shifted.
Just slightly.
She was no longer kneeling in the clearing.
Instead, she stood in the same place—but years ago.
The forest younger, the trees brighter. Her child-self crouched by the sparrow, tears in her eyes, glowing hands trembling.
And the boy was there.
Kael.
Not in armor. Not a commander. Just a boy in dark traveling clothes, eyes full of wonder and wariness.
But Elira wasn't seeing this like a dream. She was inside it. Watching. Feeling. Her heart beat in rhythm with the memory.
Then something impossible happened.
The boy looked up—at her.
Not the child-Elira. The real her. The Elira watching now, standing frozen beside the vision.
"You found the circle," he said softly.
Her breath hitched. "What…?"
"You unlocked it."
"This isn't just a memory," she whispered.
He smiled—older now, older than the boy in the memory, older than Kael had been yesterday.
"No. It's a tether. A bond."
The clearing flickered again.
She saw flashes of more moments—hidden glances, dreams she hadn't remembered until now, small moments over the years when she'd felt watched… protected. Not threatened. Guarded.
She staggered back, blinking as the world snapped into place again.
Back in the present.
The fire around her hadn't died. It was burning brighter, steadier—but no longer untamed. It moved with her breath. Her thought. Her will.
And the runes beneath her began to rise—glowing symbols lifting like ash caught in updrafts, circling her in a halo of living memory.
She reached out her hand, and the fire responded.
Not destruction. Not fear. Not even heat.
Creation.
She whispered a word—Emberain—a name she didn't remember learning, but had always known. The old tongue. Her family's true name.
A tree nearby, long-dead and hollow, sparked with light—and bloomed. Leaves unfurling. Blossoms bursting open under moonlight.
The power wasn't only fire.
It was life.
Elira sank to her knees again, overwhelmed but not afraid.
"I'm not broken," she whispered.
And for the first time in her life, she believed it.