The wind changed over the tops of the north.
Kairo felt it when they came back to Cradle lands—a soft jolt in the flame, a gasp drawn too deep. It was quiet. Too quiet.
Birdsinging was forgotten.
The earth vibrated, quietly but persistently, as if the mountain breathed slowly.
Elin welcomed them at the gates. Her robes were singed with soot. "Something's wrong. It came from the Hollowlight Vale. We thought it was a quake at first."
Kairo's jaw clenched. "It wasn't."
"No," she said. "It was a summoning."
The Vale had been a sacred site—a site where the fire had been gentle and the ground had been a listener. New Awakened would be trained there, learning to sense heat on the breeze or coax the warmth of rock. But when the Circle arrived at its edge, all they found was ruin.
The trees were blackened shells.
The streams ran with ash.
At the center of the Vale, where a mighty rune-stone had once stood, now crouched a thing.
It pulsed like a heartbeat, but not a living one.
It had no true shape—only a flowing mass of stone, smoke, and melted bone, bound together by chains of living flame twisted by shadow.
Elin shivered. "It's. corrupted elemental energy. It's not a beast—it's an abomination."
Sera drew her sword. "That's no natural force."
Virella gaped. "The Ash King is trying things."
Kairo stepped forward alone.
The earth crackled under the weight of the creature as it crept to turn toward him. No eyes. No lips. Only a face contorted from shattered statues and melted ore.
Then it spoke—not through their ears, but into their heads.
> "Burn with me."
------
The flames engulfing it swiped out—wretched green and purple. Kairo stemmed it with an encasing wall of pure flame, the air distorting.
"Who phoned you?" he snapped.
> "The one who gave me purpose. The one who gave me you."
The beast charged.
The Circle ran. Sera dove left, slicing at its limbs. Virella struck out of the shadows, for its joints. Elin tried to surround its form with fire-barricades, but the beast engulfed them, consuming the magic.
Every blow they struck healed.
Every fire they launched at it burned up.
Kairo watched—and understood.
It's built from us," he said. "From the fires of fallen Awakened. The Ash King forged it from our dead."
Elin's voice shook. "He's learning to taint our abilities. This is just the start."
Kairo moved forward again.
"No more.".
He touched deep—not merely his flame, but the Cradle's. The ember in the core of the mountain responded, warming him and remembering. Runes churned around his elbows. His cloak glowed like fire.
"You are not fire," he told the monster. "You are its shadow."
And with a roar, he launched a burst of flame not of destruction—but of purification.
It struck the creature—and it shrieked.
Not of pain.
From memory.
From the whispers of the Awakened within.
The others followed him, calling down clean fire. Not wild, but true.
Piece by piece, the corruption stripped away.
The form dissolved.
And at its core, clinging to life, was a figure—charred, broken.
An Awakened woman. Eyes wide with horror. She mouthed, "He used me…"
Then turned to ash.
In the Cradle, the Circle sat in silence.
The Ash King was not merely building armies.
He was pilfering their dead.
"Each Awakened fallen," Elin said quietly, "is a potential tool for him."
"Unless we intervene," Kairo replied.
Virella folded her arms. "Then we make sure our fallen do not die alone. Each of them, we recover. Or we burn them ourselves."
Sera nodded tightly. "Better ashes than chains."
Kairo stood that night on top of the mountain, staring at stars glinting through smoke.
He didn't cry.
But something in him stiffened.
A truth.
Not just against the Ash King's army.
But against forgetting.
For every lost name to fire.
He would light up the sky in memory of them.
And make sure the world didn't forget.