Elira woke with ash in her mouth.
The grove was quiet, but not empty. The trees still glowed faintly at their edges, like coals left too long in a hearth. The snow that had once fallen was gone, replaced by scorched earth and drifting sparks. Overhead, the sky shimmered like fire seen through smoke.
She sat up slowly, wincing. Her limbs ached from running, from falling, from the raw tension that still hummed beneath her skin.
The fox stood at the grove's edge, watching her with eyes like twin suns.
"You brought me here," she said.
"I opened the way. You followed." Its voice was neither male nor female, neither young nor old. Just fire, shaped into something almost-kind.
"Where is here?"
"A forgotten place," the Kyren said. "A scar from another oath. This is where the last ember bearer burned away her name."
Elira shivered. "What happened to her?"
"She failed."
Silence followed.
Elira looked down at her hands. They were raw in places, scraped and bloodied. But beneath the skin, something moved, heat, alive and waiting.
"She wasn't strong enough?" Elira asked.
"No," said the Kyren. "She was strong. She just chose too late."
Elira didn't know what that meant. But she would find out soon.
The fox leapt gracefully to a rock and sat, tail curling around its feet.
"You asked to learn," it said. "So listen."
Elira stood, brushing ash from her clothes.
"The ember inside you is not power. It is memory. The world's. The fire you carry is the echo of ancient pacts, old pain, broken truths. Every time you call on it, you awaken something buried."
"So I'm not creating anything," Elira said, trying to follow. "I'm just... remembering fire?"
"Exactly," said the Kyren. "And fire has a long, bitter memory."
It flicked its tail. A burst of flame erupted in the air before her hovering, shifting like a living thing. Inside the fire, shapes moved: a tree bursting into flame; a stag running through smoke; a figure cloaked in white standing atop a hill as fire swept toward her.
"Elira," the Kyren said, voice lowering, "if you are to keep the oath, you must not only command the ember. You must carry its truth. You must learn what it remembers and what it wants."
The flame grew.
And Elira stepped into it.
It didn't burn.
It welcomed her.
The heat rushed up her arms, wrapped around her shoulders, and curled against her spine like an embrace. Her breath caught. Her vision swam. And then she was somewhere else.
Not standing. Drifting.
The world around her had changed: a battlefield, frozen mid-motion. Hundreds of soldiers, caught in a ring of fire. Trees twisted into ash-statues. Crows frozen mid-wing. And in the center, a girl not much older than Elira, standing with fire running like blood from her eyes.
"She was the last one," the Kyren's voice whispered in her mind. "Her name was Irin. She bore the ember for twelve days before the Sanctum found her. She tried to save a city. She destroyed three."
Elira stared, throat tight. "What happened to her?"
"She lit the signal flame atop Hollowspire. She called for aid. And when they came, she burned herself so they wouldn't take the ember back."
The girl vanished in a ripple of flame. The vision faded.
Elira stumbled backward and found herself in the grove once more.
She dropped to one knee, panting. The fire inside her roared, not wild but awake.
"You showed me that to scare me," she said.
The Kyren shook its head. "No. To warn you. Every bearer thinks they can control it. Few ever ask why it needs controlling."
Elira stood. "Then show me how. Not how to fear it. How to use it. How to choose differently."
The Kyren's eyes narrowed, pleased.
"Very well," it said.
It leapt forward and landed just before her, fire blooming outward from its paws. The grove reshaped, stones rising into circles, ash forming lines on the ground like runes. In the center, the flame hovered once again, smaller this time.
"Light it," said the Kyren.
Elira stared. "How?"
"You already know. Reach inward. Find the ember. Let it speak."
She hesitated.
Then closed her eyes.
The ember waited in her chest, not a flame, but a pressure. A warmth. She reached toward it with something deeper than thought. And it reached back.
The flame before her flared to life.
Not with red or orange but with blue, edged in gold.
The Kyren stepped back, gaze suddenly wary.
Elira opened her eyes.
And the fire danced for her.
Far to the north, in the iron citadel of the Sanctum, a bell began to toll.
Its sound rolled over mountains and through misted canyons, low and endless.
In the Hall of Flames, the Warden Commander raised her head from a scroll.
"She's lit the ember," she said quietly.
A hooded scribe bowed. "Then the old oath stirs again."
The Warden touched a pendant beneath her collar, an old coin marked with the sigil of a fox wrapped in flame.
"Call the Emberbinders," she said. "And prepare the chains."