The wind carries the scent of smoke wherever I go.
Two years, and still the world won't let me forget what I did. Every village I pass whispers of the firestorm that tore the sky apart, of the Bloodmarked witch who turned on her own kind and vanished into the ash. They don't say my name anymore, but I hear it in the tremor of their prayers, in the way children clutch their talismans when I pass.
The girl who burned the world.
They aren't wrong.
I move through the borderlands now—those fractured places where earth and shadow bleed together, where no gods dare to look. The forests here grow twisted, roots curling like claws through bones. The rivers run dark with memory. And every night, when I close my eyes, the Flame whispers in my blood.
More. More. More.
It doesn't understand restraint. It was born of ruin and rage, and though I've tried to cage it, to tame it, I can feel it seething just beneath my skin. A living thing that remembers what freedom felt like.
I tighten the bandages around my wrist, hiding the mark that once bound me to Kael. It's little more than a scar now—faded, cold—but when I dream, I still feel the pull. Sometimes, I swear I hear him calling. Sometimes, I answer.
Tonight, I shouldn't have stayed near the settlement. Too many eyes. Too many fears. But the wind had carried something familiar—a tremor of the power that once tore through me. I followed it north, through black pines and broken fields, until I saw the smoke curling from a ruin.
The place was old. Forgotten. Once a temple, maybe. Now only stone and silence. But in the center of it all, carved into the cracked floor, was a sigil I hadn't seen in years.
The mark of the Bloodbound.
I knelt beside it, tracing the lines with trembling fingers. And the moment my skin met stone, the world shifted.
Flame burst behind my eyes. A voice I hadn't heard since the night of the fall filled my head."You think you buried me, little flame?"
My heart stopped."No," I whispered. "You're gone."
Laughter like smoke. "You burned the world to save him. Did you think the fire would forgive you?"
The ground cracked beneath me. Light flared from the sigil, searing gold and crimson. I tried to pull away, but it clung to me, wrapping my wrist in light.
The Flame wasn't gone. It had been waiting.
And now it was waking again.