Chapter 6 – The Flame That Wanders
1510 Words
– Ash on the Wind
The road to Tiren’s Hollow was made of crushed bone and dust—at least, that’s what the locals said. Lyra had walked it for two days in silence, her boots raising little swirls of grey that clung to her cloak like ghosts. The horizon shimmered with heat, and though her skin had long grown used to the touch of sun and ash, she could still feel the ember stir inside her whenever the wind shifted wrong.
She wasn’t wearing the Flamebearer’s cloak anymore.
That had been buried with Rurik.
Now she traveled in worn leather and sun-faded cloth, a traveler’s satchel at her side, a blade that had not sung in months strapped across her back. She had no sigils, no heralds. Only the weight of her name and the fire that hadn’t gone out.
The village came into view just after noon, a low sprawl of homes hunched beneath the slope of a red-stoned ridge. Smoke curled from the chimneys—not the black of battle, but the lazy grey of cookfires. Peaceful. Or pretending to be.
She knew better.
The first sign was the silence of the children.
They watched her from doorways and alleys, faces half-hidden behind hanging herbs and woven veils. No laughter. No calls. Just eyes—wide, glassy, and bright with something too old for their age. Lyra had seen those eyes before. In the dying cities after the fall. In the mirror, when her ember first rose.
One of them stood near the edge of the path, a boy with soot-blackened cheeks and a wooden charm around his neck. Lyra paused.
He raised his hand.
Ember flared in his palm.
Not bright. Not clean. It sputtered—a sickly red-orange, flickering unevenly like a fire gasping for breath. Lyra’s own ember, buried in her chest, pulsed in warning.
The boy said nothing. He just stared, then turned and vanished into a narrow alleyway. The ember winked out as he moved, like a breath cut short.
The woman at the well pretended not to notice. So did the old man on the porch. So did everyone else.
Tiren’s Hollow was burning slowly.
And no one was screaming.
Lyra entered the village like a shadow, her steps light and her senses sharper than they had been in weeks. Something had followed her across the plains. Something with the scent of ember—but none of the light. She could feel it in the ground. The way the dust refused to settle. The way the birds had stopped singing. The way the sun, even in its full blaze, cast a dim and haunted hue.
A whisper rose in her mind. Not words, but pressure. Like the pulse of a second heartbeat. She touched the ember at her core. It stirred, uneasy.
The path narrowed between buildings that leaned too close together. Strange symbols were scrawled in ash on doorways—some old Flamebound glyphs, others unrecognizable. Protective marks. Or warnings.
A dog barked once in the distance. Then silence again.
She reached the inn by evening. A crooked sign hung out front, etched with the symbol of an eye inside a flame. A symbol from the Old Flamebound tongue. Not a house of rest, but one of watching. Of keeping.
A warning. Or an invitation.
She stepped inside.
The innkeeper looked up. He didn’t ask her name. Didn’t ask her trade. Just nodded once and handed her a rusted key.
Room seven.
The same room Rurik had died in seven years ago.
Ash on the wind.
It never stayed buried.
The floorboards creaked beneath her boots as she climbed the narrow stairs. The scent of smoke and something older—bitter, metallic—clung to the walls. Shadows danced in the corners of her vision. Not spirits. Not memories. Just the mind’s way of noticing too much, too fast.
She opened the door to her room slowly.
The room was sparse. A cot, a basin, a window that looked out on the square. Dust covered everything like a forgotten blessing. But the air was warm. Too warm. As if someone had been here moments ago.
On the bed lay a single feather.
Black, with ember flecks at the tip.
Lyra picked it up.
It hummed.
Outside, the wind shifted again.
And she heard the boy laugh.
Not playfully.
Not joyfully.
It was the laugh of someone who had seen too much fire.
– The Child Who Burns
Night in Tiren’s Hollow fell without ceremony. The sun dropped behind the ridge in a smear of rust-colored light, and the village seemed to exhale—though not in peace. More like a held breath slipping loose, cautious and unsteady. The streets emptied quickly. Doors shut. Windows shuttered. Not from fear of bandits or beasts. But of something smaller.
Something already inside.
Lyra stood at her window, staring out at the square. The wind had stilled. The silence that replaced it felt heavier than sound. She traced the feather she had found with her fingers, watching how it shimmered faintly in the lamplight, ember motes clustering at the edges like they were trying to remember how to burn.
Someone knocked on her door.
Three soft raps.
She moved silently, blade in hand, heart steady. When she opened it, no one was there.
Only a folded piece of cloth lay on the floor.
She picked it up.
Inside was a child’s drawing—crude, smudged in coal dust. A figure surrounded by flames, standing alone while others burned. No faces. Just eyes. Hundreds of eyes.
A single name was scrawled in the corner:
Ira.
Lyra’s jaw clenched.
She descended the stairs quickly. The innkeeper was gone. So was the warmth in the common room. The fire had burned down to coals, and the chairs sat in odd angles, like they had been hastily vacated.
The front door was ajar.
She stepped out.
The village square was empty, but the air pulsed with presence. Like someone breathing just behind her neck. She walked slowly, ember humming beneath her skin, responding to the wrongness in the stones, the dust, the sky.
Then she heard it.
A song.
Soft, off-key. A lullaby twisted into something broken.
She followed the sound through winding alleys until she reached the old well at the village’s heart. There, seated on the edge, was the boy from earlier—the one with the ember flare.
He was singing to a doll. It was burned, one arm missing, eyes melted into black beads. He cradled it gently.
Lyra approached, cautious but not threatening.
“Are you Ira?”
The boy didn’t look up. He nodded once.
“Do you live here?”
He shook his head.
“Where are your parents?”
He looked at her then.
His eyes glowed faintly.
“They tried to put it out.”
Lyra’s heart sank.
“What did they try to put out?”
“The flame,” he whispered. “It burned inside. It wanted out.”
He raised his hand again. Ember flared, but not like before. This time it lashed—wild, angry, bright enough to cast long shadows along the well’s rim.
Lyra stepped back. Not in fear—but in recognition.
He wasn’t channeling ember.
He was being consumed by it.
“Who taught you to do that?”
“No one,” he said. “It came after the bird.”
“What bird?”
“The one with black feathers. It sings in fire. It told me I could keep burning.”
Lyra’s blood turned to ice.
A shadowform. A remnant echo. Ember wasn’t meant to speak—not without intent. But something had embedded itself in this boy. It wasn’t a Hollowborne. It wasn’t void. It was ember—but warped.
She crouched down.
“Ira, listen to me. That flame—it's not whole. It's trying to hurt you. I can help.”
The boy trembled. His doll dropped from his hands.
“They said that too,” he whispered. “Before they screamed.”
The air around him shimmered. The ground cracked. Ember surged up like a geyser, and Lyra leapt forward, wrapping her own emberlight around the blast. It pushed against her, chaotic, full of grief and pain and memory that wasn’t his.
It was someone else’s flame.
She pushed deeper, weaving her flame into his like a net—not to smother, but to cradle.
“Ira,” she said, voice sharp with heat and truth, “this fire isn’t you. Let me carry it.”
He screamed—not in fear, but in resistance.
The square exploded in light.
When it cleared, Lyra stood alone.
The boy lay collapsed, breathing shallowly. The ember that had lashed around him was gone. Not extinguished—but withdrawn.
She picked him up gently.
From the shadows, watching eyes blinked open across the village.
They had seen her flame.
They knew her name.
And somewhere beyond the ridge, the wind carried the cry of another child.
Burning.
- Writer
