The silence before the strike was deafening.
The Warden didn't move—but Mara felt the tension in the air, like a string drawn taut between flame and steel. His presence pressed down on the camp like a second sky.
"I won't give you the Heart," Mara said again, louder.
The Warden tilted his head. "Then you've chosen the path of ruin."
Before anyone could react, he moved.
Faster than thought, he vanished and reappeared behind Mara, blade drawn from the folds of his cloak—a thin, glimmering weapon that hissed when it cut through air. Talon blocked it just in time, steel meeting the Warden's edge in a shriek of sparks.
Serai shouted a word in the old tongue.
The runes around the camp erupted in flame, forming a dome of fire between them and the night. The Warden recoiled but did not retreat. His blade shimmered once and then vanished into shadow.
Mara called the fire.
It obeyed—surging to her hands, flaring in her eyes.
The Warden lunged again, this time toward her directly, his hand extended, not to strike—but to grasp the ember in her chest.
She let the fire go.
A shockwave blasted outward from her body, knocking him back. The trees nearest the camp ignited in streaks of gold and orange, the ash above turned into a storm.
The Warden rose slowly from the dust, unburned but clearly surprised.
"So," he said. "You are what they feared."
Serai stepped forward beside Mara. "She's more than that."
The Warden looked at Serai, then Talon, then back at Mara.
"This is your first warning. You carry a power born of ruin and betrayal. The more you use it, the more it will feed. Not on your enemies—on you."
Mara steadied her breath. "Then I'll feed it back with purpose."
The Warden smiled.
It wasn't cruel. It was sad.
"You are fire. Fire consumes. Remember that."
Then he vanished—into smoke, into wind, into silence.
The flames died down. The runes dimmed.
No one spoke for a long time.
Talon finally broke the silence. "So we're being hunted. Again."
"Always were," Serai said. "But now they know who she is."
Mara looked into the ashes, where the fire had burned hottest. Her reflection in the glowing embers looked older—hardened.
"I'm not running," she said. "Not from him. Not from anyone."
Serai looked at her, proud and grim. "Then we go north."
Talon sighed. "Of course it's north."
They packed quickly. The ash winds were rising again.
And in the north, beneath the ember sky, something ancient stirred… not of shadow or fire, but of memory.
Waiting for Mara to remember it too.
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