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There had been other small creatures we’d passed too quickly for me to ask about, but life here thrived.
Tonight, though… it was quiet.
Too quiet.
Even the streets, which had been bustling earlier in the week, felt thinned out. Our path up the mountainside felt still, as if something knew we were coming. But when we reached the peak of the mountain, that’s when I saw it.
Off in the distance, just west of the city, thick black smoke curled into the sky, merging with the eternal blue flames that blazed like a wound across the land. The fire had already crossed the river and its bridge, rolling fast toward another town in the far distance. It was far... but close enough for concern.
We all noticed it at once.
The four of us stopped in sync, arrested by the gravity of what we were witnessing. In the distance, trees crackled under the weight of fire, collapsing as the heat split their cores. The night sky pulsed with red, flickering with the agony of the forest.
Grief hit first. Then anger.
I didn’t need to imagine the destruction. I was watching it unfold with my own eyes. And even though I knew Mark had a hand in this chaos, the guilt still found its way into my chest. The Fae wouldn’t even manage to help fix this much damage. They couldn’t. Not like this. Everything was burning. The entire forest that once sheltered me in my first days here is ruined.
All of it over a man I called father.
And for what?
A bitter truth slithered through me, one I hadn’t wanted to face since my second day in Eari. I’d had a dream back then. A man in a cloak, his hood up. Fire erupting in a clearing just like this one. I thought it was just a dream at the time, hell, I thought the man was the villain. He could still be. Maybe I gave him the wrong power in my mind. Painted him in the darkest shades I could because I saw a burn on his eye.
But now… now I wonder if I misunderstood what I saw.
What he said still lingered, clear as crystal in my memory:
“When there is fire, there is rebirth…”
Was this it? Was this the rebirth? Or was it just the beginning of the end? I let the scent of burning cedar and rot hit my nostrils, like a letter signing itself in my mind, promising a wrong I had to right. I owed the land a debt now. A favor. A reckoning. If this fire were eternal, living, breathing, suffocating the life around it like the person who started it, then maybe it would die when its maker did. But maybe I was doing what I did best: overanalyzing the realm of possibilities. Trying to explain away something that couldn’t be reasoned with.
Still… my gut told me otherwise.
This wasn’t just a chemical reaction, a lucky strike of flame with the perfect amount of oxygen. No. This fire felt like rage, relentless, purposeful, dominating. It was flaring with intent. At its base, it glowed hot, electric blue… and at its tips, it burned a vicious, wild red. Like a lighter held too long. Like a warning.
It was deliberate.
“This has gotten out of control,” I breathed, barely managing a whisper.
Kleitos looked at me, his expression sympathetic. “We’ll settle this,” he said, firm and low. “But let’s keep moving. We don’t have all night. I’d rather be in Ameega, safe by the mountains, before this starts climbing our way like a gate to Hades.” The group answered with silent nods.
Arianna took the lead again, descending the mountainside in a blur. I gave myself one last moment, just one, to watch the fire blaze across the horizon… then fell into step at the rear, following the others down the steep trail. Ameega’s statue greeted us with a heavy, haunting presence as we entered her city again. But this time, we stayed far from the inner circle, doing our best to avoid any guards that might still be patrolling. Plus, Arianna had mentioned the night before that Mark and William were hiding out in a home.
And to her credit, she had been right… partially.
She never claimed to see the whole future, only glimpses, and this one had us scrambling through the city’s poorest suburbs. And that was saying something, because Ameega didn’t exactly reek of opulence to begin with. This city wore poverty like a second skin, stitched into the bones of its buildings. The streets we crept through now were more rundown than anything I’d seen before. Houses with shattered windows and doors hanging off their hinges. Carriages abandoned and broken in muddy drives. Grime painted across every surface. Even the snow was dirty, trampled, and gray.
But I didn’t judge her instincts. For all the filth and chaos, the scent was here. It clung to the air, thick and foul. Lingering on broken fences, caught in the curtains of half-boarded windows. We’d peeked into a few homes, thinking they might be the one, but something about them had felt too… civilized for the kind of monsters we were hunting.
Because this wasn’t just a rebellion.
I kept thinking about that woman in the lounge. The way she acknowledged their involvement. The fear in the raven-haired woman’s eyes. The way she said she had no choice in welcoming those four new women. Her words, her body language, her silence, they all stank of something darker.
So even in the black heart of this city, I knew it was darker still.
We were on our third neighborhood when the bass of the stereos suddenly rang through the quiet Victorian streets.
It hit like a gut punch after nearly two months without music. The sound spilled into the night in chaotic, pulsing waves. A deep male voice rapped over heavy percussion, layered with a softer track beneath it. The combination was both jarring and hypnotic.
