The Spark and the Marked.
1449 Words
Inside the Ember Archives
The room smelled of burned metal and roses.
Rows of old scrolls floated in enchanted stasis. Weapons from a time before scent-tracking gleamed in suspended animation. Books written in flame-script flared to life when approached, whispering in languages long dead.
In the center of the chamber, a raised platform pulsed like a heartbeat.
“Liora…” Rowan whispered. “That’s—”
She was already walking toward it.
The moment she stepped on the platform, light flared beneath her feet in the shape of a phoenix.
And then the room responded.
A surge of energy blasted outward — not fire, but memory.
Rowan stumbled back.
And suddenly, he wasn’t in the archive anymore.
---
The Vision
Snow.
Endless snow.
The world was gray, and wolves ran across broken cities, not as protectors but as creatures of war. One wore a crown of ash and fire — a woman, with silver hair braided with embers, standing atop a throne made of broken alpha bones.
She was not Liora.
But her eyes were the same.
“Do you see it now?” a voice whispered in his head. “Do you see the truth?”
Rowan turned.
He stood in the middle of the old world. Void-marked wolves — ones with no scent, no name — were being hunted. He saw their faces. Children. Warriors. Some looked like him.
Some looked like—
Liora.
Then everything exploded in black smoke.
---
Back in the Archives
Rowan gasped as he slammed back into the present.
Liora collapsed beside him, panting, sweat soaking through her hoodie.
“I saw her,” she said. “The first Flameborn. She wasn’t just fire. She was memory.”
“I saw the void,” Rowan replied, his voice cracking. “And it’s not gone. It’s hiding. Waiting.”
He looked at her, and for the first time, his voice trembled.
“We’re not cursed, Liora. We’re chosen. The fire in us — it remembers. And the void… it remembers us, too.”
---
Later That Night –
They lay side by side on the rooftop, backs against cool tile, staring at the twin moons above: one full, one fractured.
“I used to think I’d never shift,” Liora whispered. “That I’d just stay scentless and unchosen forever.”
“You’re not unchosen,” Rowan said. “You’re just... ahead of your time.”
“Is that your way of calling me ancient?”
He smirked. “Maybe.”
She turned to him. “What did you really see? In the vision.”
Rowan hesitated. Then: “You. Burning. Not in pain. Not angry. Just... shining. Like you were becoming.”
Liora swallowed hard. “That scares me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m starting to want it.”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t have to.
---
Monday Morning – The Void Appears
Everything changed when the screaming started.
Rowan and Liora had just entered the east courtyard when a junior student — maybe thirteen — dropped to the ground, convulsing.
His scent? Gone.
His shadow? Flickering.
And drawn across his skin were black cracks — like lightning strikes burned in reverse.
“Get help!” someone shouted.
But Rowan couldn’t move.
Because when the boy looked up — just for a second — his eyes were all black.
And in his mind, Rowan heard a voice he hadn’t heard since the archives.
“Your flame called us back.”
“And now we remember you.”
---
Helix Academy was locked down.
Not the subtle kind — not the quiet spells that watched from corners.
This was a full quarantine. Barrier spells. Scent scans. Chaperones shadowing every unbonded wolf.
And Liora Thorn, once ignored, was now watched like a ticking bomb.
---
Liora stared at the bruise on her forearm. Not a bruise, not really — but a bloom of fire-colored skin, faintly glowing beneath her wrist.
It hadn’t gone away since the Archives.
Every time she breathed too deep, it flared.
Every time she touched Rowan, it blazed.
And now that kid — the void-marked one — had whispered words in Rowan’s head.
They hadn’t told anyone. Not the school. Not even Cassian.
Somehow, it felt bigger than rules. Bigger than Helix.
Something old was waking.
Something only their blood could hear.
---
In the waiting room outside the Council’s temporary headquarters, Liora sat beside Rowan. Neither of them spoke.
Cassian paced, his arms folded tight, silver hair gleaming under the artificial lights.
“You could have been expelled,” he muttered. “What were you thinking? Entering the Ember Archives? Ancient wards? Possible psychic contamination?”
Rowan cracked a grin. “I don’t know, man. Seemed like the natural next step after scorching a mat together.”
Cassian stopped pacing. “This isn’t a joke. That boy — Keller — he’s marked. Do either of you understand what that means?”
Liora lifted her chin. “We understand more than you think.”
Cassian’s mouth tightened. “And Averie? Did she tell you what she saw before she vanished?”
That made Rowan blink. “Vanished?”
Cassian froze.
Liora narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean, vanished?”
Cassian looked at them both. Then, quietly: “She hasn’t sent a letter in over six months. And the last one wasn’t sent from Council ground. It was sent from... off-grid coordinates in the Westlands.”
Something cold spread through Liora’s chest.
Averie Flameborn didn’t disappear. She erased herself when something too dangerous got close.
What had she seen?
And what was coming for them?
---
That night, they returned to the rooftop — the only place the security drones didn’t hover.
Liora pulled her knees to her chest.
“I should be scared,” she whispered.
Rowan tilted his head toward her. “But you’re not?”
“I’m something else. It’s like... my blood is louder now. Like something is calling me from underneath all this tech and politics.”
Rowan’s voice was soft. “Do you think it’s your grandmother?”
Liora shook her head. “No. I think it’s older than that. The fire isn’t just a gift. It’s a memory. And I don’t think we inherited it. I think we were always part of it.”
Rowan didn’t reply at first.
Then: “You said the fire might not be fire. That it could be memory.”
“I still believe that.”
“So what happens when memory wakes up?”
She looked at him. Her heart thudded hard.
“Then we stop running from it. And we let it burn.”
Saturday was the annual Broken Moon Masquerade.
A human tradition, adapted by werewolves to honor the fractured moon — a symbol of division, of the great wars.
Everyone wore masks. Everyone danced like no one knew who they were.
Liora had never gone before.
This year, she showed up in black.
No heels. No sparkle.
Just a simple mask with phoenix wings painted in silver.
When she entered the ballroom, everything stopped.
For once, she wasn’t invisible.
---
Rowan found her by the punch table.
“You’re terrifying,” he said, looking her up and down.
She smirked. “You already said that.”
They didn’t dance.
But they moved through the party like magnets, circling, watching.
Liora noticed it first — a boy in a mirror mask, standing too still.
Rowan noticed the second — a flicker of shadow where a scent should have been.
They left the party without a word.
---
They found him in the south wing. Alone. Surrounded by spellbooks older than their country.
He turned.
His face was pale. His eyes black.
“You shouldn’t have woken it,” the boy rasped.
Rowan stepped forward. “Woken what?”
“The ember memory. It was sealed for a reason.”
Liora’s voice was a blade. “Who are you?”
“I am remembering,” the boy hissed. “Just like you. But I serve the shadow that was forgotten. And it is coming.”
Then he screamed — and vanished in a c***k of light.
The books around them ignited.
Rowan shielded her with his body.
The Fire didn't touch them.
It bowed.
Helix Academy issued a formal report: malfunctioning spellbook, hallucination, no threat.
But the students whispered.
A new term was spreading.
Emberborn.
Some called it a mutation.
Others called it prophecy.
Liora called it truth.
And Rowan?
He was starting to dream of the original Emberborn Council.
Of an enemy whose name had been erased from every book.
Of a girl who once ruled beside fire… and
vanished in shadow.
- Writer
