They had touched something ancient in her.
Something Ivy wasn’t sure she could control anymore.
Since the meeting at the Ebon Vale, the fire within her pulsed differently—no longer waiting to be summoned, but constantly awake, humming beneath her skin like a second heartbeat.
Her flames used to answer her.
Now… they whispered back.
Ember noticed it first.
“You’re glowing in your sleep,” she said on the second night back, blinking wide-eyed from her blanket beside Ivy’s bed.
“Glowing?”
“Your hair,” the girl said softly. “It flickers like a candle.”
Kael confirmed it the next morning. “It’s not just in your sleep. Your power is… leaking.”
“It’s not leaking,” Ivy said, frowning at her reflection in the bowl of water. “It’s warning me.”
“Of what?”
She looked up.
“That I’m changing
