ECHOES AND THE FIRST FLAME
1285 Words
Winter Samaya woke up before dawn, not because she had been sleeping, she hadn’t really slept at all, but because of a peculiar feeling that someone had just whispered her name. It wasn’t a sound she could hear, not even in her thoughts. It was as if her very bones had picked it up.
The room was shrouded in dimness. A soft, pale light seeped in through the edges of the curtain, casting long shadows that danced across the floorboards. Her wrist still buzzed with a faint tingle, even though the glowing mark had faded to a dull shade reminiscent of old copper.
She gazed at it, half-hoping it had all been a figment of her imagination.
But it wasn’t.
The journal remained beside her, untouched. She hadn’t shifted from the armchair since the night before. Her father’s words echoed in her mind, but now something else weighed heavily on her.
She could feel the world breathing differently.
Not visibly, no shifting skies or thunderous omens, but in subtle, quiet ways. The wind moved wrong. Her breath carried too far. Time itself felt... irregular, like a song with a skipped beat.
She stood and slowly walked to the window.
Outside, the neighborhood was still. The old streetlamps buzzed. A stray dog nosed through a trash bin across the street, everything is normal.
But something pulsed beneath it. A low pressure, like a distant storm brewing beneath the skin of the world.
Later that morning, Winter wandered into her father’s greenhouse, the one place in the house that still smelled like life.
Vines had begun curling toward the ceiling, as they always had, but now… they twisted unnaturally fast. She paused beside a potted vine-leaf and she blinked.
It moved?
Slightly, just enough for the leaf to face her. She frowned. “Don’t start acting strange now, too.”
The plant curled its stem tighter around the pot’s rim. Protective. Observant.
She stepped back. "…Okay.”
Then her father’s words returned to her mind. You’ve always had the gift…
She whispered, almost ashamed to say it: “Are you listening to me?”
The leaf twitched.
And for one heart-stopping moment, Winter felt something inside it. Not thoughts. Not emotions. Just a presence. Faint and small, like an animal hiding in a burrow, but aware.
It was something connected to her.
That night, the wind howled.
The kind of wind that made dogs go quiet and made crows fly crooked across the moon.
Winter stood at her front door, staring out into the empty street. She didn’t know why she'd opened it. She hadn’t heard a knock. Hadn’t seen a light.
She just... felt something.
A presence.
She stepped onto the porch, barefoot.
The wind tore at her robe, cold and sharp. She narrowed her eyes.
Nothing.
No one.
Until...
There's a flicker.
Down the road, where the lamplight barely reached, a shape stood at the edge of the dark.
Cloaked. Tall. Unmoving.
Winter blinked. For a second, the figure wasn’t there. Then it was again, but it was closer. She move a footstep forward.
Then, she stepped back instinctively. The mark on her wrist flared with sudden heat. And the air turned brittle.
Then, from the dark, a sound came... no speech. No breath. A rasp. Like metal scraping against glass. The thing took another step.
Her breath caught in her throat.
It was not human.
And it was coming for her.
The wind howled louder now, unnatural, discordant, like a thousand voices screaming into glass.
Winter staggered backward into the house, and slum the door shut with trembling hands.
When the doorknob sounds "click" She locked the bolt. Then the chain. Then backed up away, with her heart is hammering.
The air didn’t calm.
The door began to breathe.
The wood pulsed inward with each gust of wind, flexing like lungs under pressure. The floor vibrated. Her lights flickered, once, twice.
Then...
Silence.
Utter and total.
Even the ticking of distant clocks had stopped.
Winter turned slowly. Her father’s pocket watch, the one that had vanished the night before, now placed on the mantel. Close, still and silent.
She stepped toward it, even her breath is shaky.
“Are you trying to warn me?” she whispered.
It didn’t answer.
But behind her, the chain on the front door slid free on its own.
Her blood froze.
No no no...
She turned just in time to see the bolt unclick. The door creaked inward.
And the Lurian stepped through.
A tall figure stood there, cloaked in black fabric that didn’t flutter in the breeze. Its face was an empty void, not masked, but simply absent. Where a head should have been, there was only darkness, and within that darkness, a mouth resembling a tear in the fabric of reality slowly began to open
"Time is flawed."
"The Watch is broken."
"Return it. Or burn with it."
Winter stumbled back, her eyes wide with shock. A searing pain shot through her wrist, as if it were on fire. The sigil there throbbed, and a warm, bronze light seeped through the cracks in her skin.
She raised her arm, as if to shield herself, and the mark burst into flame.
A sphere of golden fire ignited around her hand, not hot, but roaring with pressure, like she’d opened a furnace from within her own soul.
The Lurian hissed, recoiling slightly, cloak rippling like oil in reverse.
Winter didn’t know what she was doing.
She screamed, not out of fear, but refusal. "I don’t belong to you!”
And the fire obeyed.
It surged outward, a pulse of raw kinetic energy that tore through the air and slammed into the Lurian. The thing flew backward, crashing through the open door and into the street. Asphalt cracked under the impact.
Winter stumbled to her knees, gasping. The fire on her arm dimmed to embers, then vanished.
But it wasn’t over.
She looked up.
The Lurian was already standing again.
The air around it bent. Streetlights shattered. Windows up and down the block exploded outward as if pulled by a vacuum.
It stepped forward again, slower now, and more S
smarter.
Winter clutched the mantel for support. The pocketwatch vibrated violently, ticking faster. Then it snapped open.
And from within, the dragon’s voice returned.
Do not run, Winter Samaya. You are not the prey. You are the flame.
The world slowed.
She rose to her feet.
Outside, the Lurian drew in air like a collapsing lung.
Winter stepped forward, with her eyes glowing bronze now. Then she raised her hand.
And the plants in her father's greenhouse answered.
Vines snapped through windows like whips, barrelling toward the street. Trees creaked, groaned, and then moved. Bark cracked. Leaves shimmered bronze under moonlight.
The Lurian turned to strike...
And the street came alive.
Roots twisted around its limbs, pulling it back with force. Vines whipped through the air like sharp blades against its cloak. The ground cracked under the pressure of rising tree limbs.
Winter stood in the doorway, her hand radiating molten light, her hair dancing wildly in the wind.
“Leave,” she said. “This isn’t your time anymore.”
The Lurian screamed, the sound not of pain, but of failure. Then it vanished into a tear of shadow, collapsing like a burnt photograph.
Until she's gone... then the silence returned.
The wind died. The house stilled.
Winter stood there, shaking, with her heart racing, the front door wide open, the street scorched, vines slowly settling into stillness.
Behind her, the pocketwatch ticked once… and closed. She realized that because of her father's gift she was able to do something more than she couldn't imagine.
- Writer
