They each held the fire differently. I saw it in the way the fire moved toward them – drawn not by fury or hunger, but etched deep in their bodies. One Sister cupped it in her palm like a living coal, the flame licking slow and deliberate between her fingers, answering to her touch alone. Another bore it over her heart, a searing brand that pulsed with each breath she took. A third had it woven into her hair, strands braided with shining gold, the fire threaded through her hair as if it had been spun there by hand. The fourth moved with the fire around her throat, not choking but crowning her voice in molten light, as though the very air that left her lips had once scorched the heavens. The last carried hersinward, hidden beneath her skin, but something in the air still shifted toward her, drawn by what couldn’t be seen.
And Eleonora – she too carried the fire in her gaze – fierce and barely tethered, a flame circling the iris. The same charge that lit beneath my skin, the blaze that surged in my blood – it lived in her, too. I saw it, and I knew it, and there was no mistaking it.
“But why am I here then?” I frowned, my mind racing, trying to understand not only the vastness of this space, but my place in it.
Eleonora held my eyes, her expression tightening just slightly. Behind her, the other Sisters inclined their heads – not all at once, but in a slow, unhurried sequence, like fire moving through dry fields, deliberate and unstoppable.
“You’re here because we called you,” she said, and her voice seemed to blend to other voices, around her and almost as if through her. “When the last thread snapped, when the fire tore free from Mowgara and surged into you because there was nowhere else for it to go.” She looked past me then, to the five standing at our side, and I followed her gaze to the flicker of something unspoken between them. “Because there is no one left to bear it but you.” she continued. “That is why we called you here – because you now carry what was never meant to be held alone.”
I let her words sink in, slow and heavy. I felt the flame even now, pulsing through my limbs, surging behind my eyes. The fire that had scalded its way into me, that had cracked bone and split skin and set every thread of me alight – it had not merely claimed me. It burned on, bound to every part of me.
“You mean I have all of it,” I whispered. “Every drop that ever passed through your hands. Through theirs.” I looked again at the Sisters, at the way the flame still clung to them, as if it had never truly left, but now more like a ghost, like a memory. “Even hers,” I added, the word bitter and burning in my mouth. Mowgara’s fire. Her ruin.
All of it now surging beneath my skin like a tide that could not be held back.
Eleonora tilted her head, a flicker of sorrow in her eyes, as if she felt the weight I carried.
“It was never meant to burn in one,” she said, and there was a strain in it—thin and tightly held, like something braced against breaking. “Even Drizzna, who took to the fire first, could not bear it long. She nearly broke under the force of it, until she shared it with her kin, her blood, her sisters – and in dividing it, saved her life.”
The other Sisters stood motionless, but the air around them tightened, as though this memory itself still lived here, still burned.
“But if there’s no one left of that bloodline,” I hadn’t meant to speak aloud, but the thought struck hard and hollow. “If you’re all… already gone. Then, then I am –” I faltered.
“The last.” Eleonora stepped forward then, not reaching for me, but standing close enough that I could feel the heat flickering just beneath her skin. “It has already begun to fray at the edges. Time is running short, child,” she said, then, faster now and deliberate and measured. “And if the fire ruptures through now, it will not burn you alone. It will tear through everything on this continent – land, sky, every living thing caught in its path – until nothing remains but flame.”
“What… what can I do?” I asked. When the Sisters did not answer straight away, a grim realisation started to settle in my chest. “Is there anything that can be done?”
Eleonora raised her hand and curved her fingers underneath my chin. “It is nothing short of a miracle that you still draw breath.” She said. “The weight of the full flame almost crushed Drizzna—and she was the greatest of us.” Her eyes searched mine until she paused, as if she had found what she was looking for. “And yours is unclean, tainted by Mowgara’s corruption and the ruinshe wrought with it.”
She released my chin and cupped my face with her hands, cool and comforting against the heat in this strange space. “But you are yet untouched by it, not lost to it. Your mind has not bent like Mowgara’s did. You still can choose to save what we have given our lives to protect. You can still save the continent and all those who dwell in her.”
I raised my hands to her wrists, and realised they were trembling. “But… but not myself?”
“No, child. There is no undoing what has been done.” There was compassion on Eleonora’s face. Sadness, even. But it was no less resolute. “I’m sorry.”
I pressed my lips to a tight line and steadied myself against her hands, still gently framing my face. The fire I had spent my life without now burned in every part of me, wild and consuming. I had built myself around its absence, grown hard in the shadow left behind, and yet here it was, ready to claim not only my life but all of Eryndia. I had never asked for this, never sought it, yet it had found me in the end, a burden thrust into my hands with nowhere else to go. And now it was up to me to destroy it—or let it consume everything and everyone. It didn’t seem like much of a choice, I thought, to die or to die and take everything with me.
And yet, as the bitterness of a life stolen from me – once and now again – and desperation squeezed black fingers around my heart, all I could think about were Benni, Astrid, Daen, Maeve… even Mathias. Though he was no longer among the living, I thought of the things he had loved, believed to be right, true, and worthy of sacrifice. I knew then, no matter how much I resented that it had fallen to me to ensure they would not burn to ashes, that it was exactly what I would do. I would always choose them. I would save them. No matter the cost.
“Alright.” I said, under my breath – then firm, louder. “Alright. Tell me what I need to do.”
Eleonora closed her eyes, sorrow and pain briefly etching herfeatures, as her thumbs softly brushed over my cheekbones. Then she pulled me into an embrace that would have knocked the air out of my lungs had there been any. As fast as she had pulled me close, she pushed me to arm’s length and her eyes met mine, bright and burning.
“You must go to Dragna’toch.” My lips parted, but she continued, her words flowing fast and tangling into the other voices around us before I managed a word. “We can try and help you from afar for a while, but Dragna’toch is the only place that can contain what burns in you now.”
“Dragna’toch.” I whispered, to myself more than to her.
“Its walls are stone fortified by fire from the last living dragons. They are braced with their bones and their scales. Mowgara couldn’t burn it down despite the fire she wielded – so neither can you. It is the only place that can withstand what is coming… when the time comes.”
“When will it come?” I asked, my voice surprisingly steady despite the drumming blood in my ears. “How long do I have?”
“I don’t know, child. But whatever time you have, it is growing shorter by the moment.”
“I don’t…” I wet my dry lips. “I don’t know where Dragna’toch is. I don’t know the way.”
“Oh, my dear child, you know the way.” Eleonora grasped my hands, her fingers threading into mine, her voice soft like a song. “No roads lead to Dragna’toch, but all roads bring you home, sister.”
“No gates will greet you at Dragna’toch, but they all open to you, sister.” I whispered back, and suddenly, the pieces started to fall into place.
