I watched the last of the seam close completely, and the sprites burst into brighter motion around the cauldrons, scattering sparks through the air as the pressure lifted. I wanted to shout in celebration as excitement ran through me, but then I glanced around the Flame Ward as the sprites went on about their business as if we hadn’t just stopped Shadowick fromdigging into our memory forge. It was a quiet reminder about how little each action mattered when everyone had a part to play.
I smiled and turned around, walking nearly to the stairwell when I felt a tug at the hem of my sleeve.
It was gentle, barely a pull at all, but it brought my attention down to a small sprite.
She was smaller than the others. Her flame-body glowed softer, but her eyes were bright.
“What is it?” I whispered, because something about the place demanded quiet, the way a library does. Even the air seemed to listen.
The sprite lifted one tiny hand and pointed—not toward the cauldrons I’d seen, not toward the tucked-away alcove where Celeste’s memories now rested, but toward a shadowed corner I would have sworn hadn’t existed five minutes ago.
A nook under a window.
And inside that nook, on a low iron stand, burned a flame.
A small one.
And it was blue, but this blue was deep and cold at the edges,
I stopped so abruptly that my boot scuffed the floor.
Every part of me that had learned magic the hard way, by stumbling into it, by getting burned, by losing things I cared about, told me that blue flame meant old power, old magic.
“What is that?”
The sprite fluttered in a small circle, then pointed again, more insistently, then lifted both hands and made a motion like stirring the air.
Circling.
Circling.
I stepped closer, and the heat from the blue flame didn’t hit me the way the others did. It didn’t warm my skin, but it pressed against my mind.
I leaned in, peering in and expecting to see something immediately, and at first, I saw nothing but the slow curl of fire and the dark metal beneath it.
But as the small sprite lifted her hands again, she began the circling motion, slower this time, as though coaxing the flame into remembering.
I felt the air change and watched as the blue fire sharpened. A faint shimmer spread across it like oil on water. The bowl seemed to deepen, as if it held more space than it should.
And then, like fog parting, an image emerged.
It wasn’t immediately clear. It felt like I was looking through a rain-streaked window, and I held my breath.
And then, finally, two figures stood in a dim place. Their outlines were indistinct, but their voices carried through the flame as if the memory cared more about sound than sight.
“…he’s back again,” one voice said.
It wasn’t Nova. It wasn’t Ardetia. It wasn’t Keegan. It wasn’t my father. It was someone I didn’t recognize. Perhaps older, perhaps, but not ancient.
“The boy?” another voice asked.
The words sent a chill through me.
“The boy,” the first voice repeated. In the flame, the blurred figure shifted slightly, turning as though someone had just stepped into a doorway behind them.
I leaned closer to the flame, bracing my hands on my knees to steady myself.
The second voice muttered something sharp under their breath. “He came from Shadowick.”
