The night was silent.
Not the kind of silence Ariya had grown used to—broken by Kael's slow breathing, Lyra's dagger spinning in the dark, or Jax muttering nonsense in his sleep. This silence felt alive. Too still. Too deep.
She blinked.
She wasn't in her bedroll anymore.
She stood barefoot in a field of ash, soft and gray beneath her toes. The sky above was black, lit only by a burning line of gold on the horizon. And in front of her… stood a flame.
A single pillar of fire. Tall. Unmoving. Silent.
It did not flicker. It did not roar.
It waited.
Ariya stepped closer, drawn without knowing why. The wind didn't blow. The air didn't burn. But her chest felt tight. Her flame stirred like a heartbeat, echoing the rhythm of something much older than her.
As she neared the flame, it shifted.
And then, he stepped out of it.
A man—no, a figure, shadow-wrapped and glowing at the edges. Cloaked in black. Eyes of silver.
Her breath caught.
He wasn't fire. He wasn't shadow. He was both. And when their eyes met…everything stopped.
She reached out—not by choice, but by instinct.
So did he.
Their fingers almost touched—
And suddenly, the fire rushed inward.
It hit her chest like a crash of wind and heat. She gasped, stumbling back—
—and awoke.
Ariya sat up fast, heart hammering. Her tunic was soaked with sweat, her hands shaking.
The fire pit beside them had long gone cold. Jax snored softly nearby. Lyra was curled beneath her hood. Kael was already awake, sharpening a dagger in the dark.
But Ariya barely noticed any of it.
Because on her shoulder—just above her collarbone—her skin burned.
She pulled her sleeve aside.
And there, glowing faint red against her skin, was a symbol.
Small. Winding. A spiral of flame curled around a broken crescent.
She had never seen it before. And yet, somehow… it felt familiar.
Her fingers hovered above it, breath shallow.
What was this?
Far away, in a fortress cut from ice and glass, Ruvan jolted awake.
His breath came in sharp bursts, chest rising fast beneath his cloak. The Shard inside him pulsed—not with cold, but with heat.
He pressed a hand to it, wincing.
It had never burned before.
He had dreamed of fire.
Of her.