The forest thickened as Caelum pressed deeper into the wild.
Three days since exile.
His cloak was soaked through. The food in his satchel gone. The last of the warmth had left his bones the night before, when he'd curled beneath the roots of an old ash tree and dreamed of fire licking his fingertips—only to wake and find the tree smoldering.
He'd doused it quickly. But the bark still whispered smoke.
Something inside him was growing louder.
By the fourth day, the trees began to change. Older. Broader. Their roots broke through stone paths half-swallowed by moss and time. This was no ordinary forest. He could feel it in the way the wind held its breath. In the way the birds fell silent when he passed.
And then, he saw it.
A wall—part of one, anyway—jutting from the side of a cliff, its stones covered in ivy and carved with symbols he didn't recognize. A half-collapsed archway framed the entrance to what must have once been a massive structure, now overgrown and half-buried in earth and vine.
An ancient ruin.
He stepped closer, his fingers brushing the carvings.
The moment he touched them, they glowed.
Faint, golden. Like sunlight under water. The warmth surged into his fingertips—so familiar, so right—that his breath caught.
The stones were responding to him.
The wind stirred. A whisper threaded through the leaves, in no tongue he recognized, but it made the hairs on his neck rise.
Still, he stepped through the arch.
---
The inside was cooler, darker—lit only by the cracks in the stone ceiling where sunlight filtered through. Carvings covered every wall. A great circular hall stretched out ahead, its floor sunken in the middle, like an arena or gathering place. At the far end stood a throne of blackstone, empty but imposing.
He took another step—
And the shadows moved.
Figures dropped from above with no sound. Cloaked, masked, silent. A dozen or more, surrounding him before he could blink. One raised a staff carved with bones. Another drew a curved blade.
Caelum raised his hands, heart pounding. "I'm not here to fight!"
The circle tightened.
Then, from behind the throne, a woman stepped forward.
She was older—fifty, maybe more—but her bearing was regal, her eyes sharp. Her cloak was red, deep as dried blood. Her hair woven with beads and small golden feathers.
She spoke in a strange tongue first, melodic and low.
Caelum shook his head. "I don't understand."
She studied him for a long time. Then: "You touched the gate."
He nodded, cautious. "It lit up. I didn't mean to—"
"Only flame-born may wake the stone," she said.
The others murmured. A few stepped back.
"What is that?" Caelum asked.
The woman walked toward him. "You carry the old fire. Not conjured. Not stolen. Inherited."
"I didn't inherit anything," he said bitterly. "They cast me out. Said it was a curse."
Her eyes gleamed. "Only the fearful call fire a curse. To those who remember the old ways, it is a lineage."
Caelum stared at her. "Who are you?"
"We are the Kynari," she said. "The last flame-keepers. Exiled from the kingdom before your grandfather was born. Hidden here, in the bones of the world."
The others lowered their weapons now, watching him with something like awe.
"You are one of us," she said. "Whether you know it yet or not."
He blinked, trying to grasp it. "I've never met anyone like me."
"You still haven't," she said with a hint of a smile. "You are not like us. You are something new."
Caelum stepped forward, his heart racing. "Then teach me. Whatever this is—whatever I am—I need to understand it. Control it."
The woman nodded slowly. "Then you may enter."
She raised her hand, and the stones behind the throne shifted—revealing a staircase spiraling downward, lit by faint flames that didn't seem to burn the stone.
A path into the heart of the ruin.
Into the truth.
As Caelum descended, the fire in his blood pulsed steadily.
For the first time, he wasn't afraid of it.