The Ember Within
Elira didn't know how far she walked—only that the forest grew older with every step. The trees twisted higher, their roots like knotted fingers reaching through moss and shadow. The air pulsed, not with danger, but with something older.
She stopped at a familiar clearing.
One she hadn't visited in over a decade.
The stones were still there—flat and worn with age, arranged in a broken circle. The same ones she used to play on. The same ones where a sparrow had once died in her hands.
Her fingers trembled as she knelt down in the moss.
She remembered crying. She remembered the bird's weight, small and hopeless. The way her hands had glowed when she tried to fix what couldn't be fixed.
But now… other memories rose to the surface.
A boy. Dark hair. Quiet eyes.
He had stepped from the trees, not frightened by her glowing hands. Maybe a year older. Calm, when she had been afraid.
"You're not broken," he had said. "You just don't know how to shape it yet."
She had asked his name, but he'd only smiled.
"I'll come back when it's safe," he told her, brushing ash from her fingers. "Until then… stay hidden."
The memory struck her like a flame catching dry leaves—sudden, consuming.
It was Kael.
Years younger, but the same eyes. The same quiet strength.
Her throat tightened. She'd known him once. Trusted him. Before the world made them enemies.
Before he became the man dragging her brother in chains.
And now…
Her magic surged—not wild, but alive. It curled around her in golden tendrils, warm and bright, reaching upward like fire fed by air.
The runes on the old stones glowed softly, responding to her presence for the first time in years.
Her bloodline had never died.
And neither had the bond she'd once formed with the boy in the woods.