speed 2
830 Words
Kaelen rode with Amara through dawn-faded sands, past broken trade routes, and into the southern fringe — where old temples turned to bone piles and the land remembered violence better than peace.
Saltana slept fitfully in the makeshift cart behind them, bandaged but still burning with fever. They had little time. Sahen’s reach was spreading faster than they could run.
“We’ll find one of the names here,” Amara said. “A village keeper. She was Flameborn once, before she vanished.”
Kaelen nodded, looking around the horizon. “And if Sahen found her first?”
Amara didn’t answer.
They crested a dune — and stopped.
The village was gone.
Smoldering roofs. Walls torn down by something not natural. A body nailed to a wall. Smoke curled upward in lazy ribbons as if the flame hadn’t just destroyed the town but haunted it.
Kaelen dismounted and moved through the ruin.
Twenty… thirty dead. Children. Elders. No soldiers.
Lives— erased… just like that.
At the edge of the square, he found her.
A girl. Maybe nine. Covered in soot and blood. Sitting next to two lifeless forms.
She looked up at Kaelen without fear — and in her eyes, something flickered.
Blue.
Kaelen knelt. “What’s your name?”
She didn’t speak. She reached for his hand and gripped it tight.
“She’s Flameborn,” Amara whispered behind him.
“But she’s not on the list,” Kaelen said.
“Then the list is wrong.”
They had no choice now.
The m******e wasn’t just a message.
It was a hunt.
And they were already too late.
The prison chamber where they kept Zaria had no windows. No air. No hope.
Only steel. Cold. Wet. And dark.
She had nearly passed out when the door shattered inward with a thunderous bang.
She opened her eyes to see a figure — wrapped in a wet material, face hidden beneath cloth and blood — standing in the doorway, breathing raggedly.
His hands bled. His body leaned against the wall. But he moved like a ghost with purpose.
And he destroyed everything in his path.
The guards fell before they screamed. The torturer — the one who laughed while she suffered — went down without even drawing his blade.
Zaria blinked.
She tried to speak, but her lips barely moved. “Who…”
The figure dropped to one knee beside her, his breath hitching in pain. “You’re not dying here,” he said. “Not in chains.”
He cut her free. Scooped her into shaking arms.
They ran.
Staggered.
Bled.
In the courtyard, a single horse waited.
“I can’t… keep going,” he gasped, stumbling to his knees. Zaria tumbled beside him.
The figure looked at her and slowly pulled down his mask.
Zaria froze.
Drevaris.
Barely alive. Face pale, one eye swollen shut. A deep wound across his ribs. He smiled — bloody, trembling.
“I never… served your enemies,” he whispered. “Only watched… until I couldn't anymore.”
“Why?” she whispered, tears hot on her cheeks.
“I owed Kaelen’s father.”
He lifted her and tied her gently to the horse.
“You have to go. Now.”
“But you’ll—”
He smiled, delirious.
“Better that… than forgetting who I was.”
She grabbed his arm. “What do I do, where do I go?”
He leaned close, whispering words she didn’t understand but felt like a knife in her chest.
> “Find your soulmate... only then will everything find its place.”
“What does that mean?” she begged.
But he slapped the horse, sending it flying into the evening with her tied to it.
And then he turned.
Stood alone.
As Sahen’s men came for him.
Miles away, in a forgotten temple of basalt and salt, the vigilante circle lit their flame once more.
The masked woman knelt before the burning pool.
Rokhen watched the smoke curl.
“It’s begun.”
“Yes,” the masked one said. “But the balance has shifted.”
Ilen entered with fresh blood on his hands.
“The village is gone. But the girl survived.”
They all turned.
“She carries Kaelen’s mark,” the masked one said.
“She's no heir.”
“No,” she whispered. “She’s a signal.”
Rokhen’s eyes narrowed. “A prophecy?"
“No. A correction.”
They turned toward the box — the sealed one, buried in stone.
And this time, when they looked at it…
It pulsed…
The horse thundered into the valley long after night fell.
Zaria collapsed off its back near the base of a crumbling tower — half-conscious, bloodied, broken.
And just before she passed out, a warm hand touched her shoulder.
She looked up.
A girl — the same one from Kaelen’s vision — stood there, silent.
Her eyes glowed faint blue.
“Don’t worry,” the girl whispered. “He’s coming.”
- Writer
