Chapter #7 - The Echo of Fire

Auren’s POV

The light was still burning behind my eyelids long after it had vanished.

The clearing was silent now, the kind of silence that comes after something sacred has been broken, or born. Smoke curled through the air, pale and shimmering, carrying the scent of silver ash and scorched earth.

Elara lay at the center of it all, her cloak half-burned, her skin illuminated by faint threads of moonlight that pulsed beneath the surface like veins of living fire. The Heart floated above her, no longer flickering, but steady and strong. Alive. Because of her.

Cael knelt beside her, his face pale and unreadable, fingers hovering an inch from her skin as if afraid to touch. I’d seen him face down Riftborn without blinking. Now, he looked like a man staring at the edge of a blade pressed against his throat.

“She’s breathing,” I said quietly.

“I know.” His voice was rough, too controlled. “But it’s not the same.”

He was right. The rhythm of her breath matched the glow of the Heart, one inhale for every pulse of light. The forest itself seemed to breathe with her. The roots beneath my boots thrummed softly, alive with something vast and old.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

Cael didn’t answer right away. His eyes lifted toward the Heart, its light reflecting in his gold irises like a storm trapped in glass. “It means the Veil chose her.”

I barked a laugh, sharp and humorless. “You make it sound like a blessing.”

He turned his head slowly, and the look he gave me cut deeper than any blade. “It isn’t.”

The wind shifted. The forest whispered, voices of leaves and distant wolves calling through the dark. I glanced toward the treeline. Shadows moved, faint and fast, but not Riftborn, not anymore. These shapes felt heavier, more deliberate. Watching.

“We should move,” I said. “If the Heart’s whole again, it’ll draw everything to it, hunters, spirits, whatever’s left of the Rift’s spawn.”

Cael finally reached out, lifting Elara carefully into his arms. Her head lolled against his shoulder, and for a moment, her hand brushed his chest and the mark on her palm flaring faintly where it touched him. He froze.

“She’s tethered,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “The bond’s formed.”

“Between her and the Heart?” I asked.

His jaw tightened. “Between her and me.”

That earned a blink from me. “That wasn’t in the plan.”

“It wasn’t supposed to happen at all.”

I let out a low whistle. “You always did attract the impossible, brother.”

He ignored that, as usual, and started walking toward the Hollow’s edge. I fell in beside him, blades still drawn, senses wide open. The trees bent subtly as we passed, their branches parting to reveal a narrow path of moonlight. The forest remembered her now. It wouldn’t forget.

“Cael,” I said after a while, “if she’s connected to the Heart, and the Heart’s tied to the Veil…”

“Then she’s the bridge,” he finished quietly.

“Between realms.”

“Between ruin and survival.”

He said it like it hurt to speak.

We moved fast and silent, the forest our only witness. Every few steps, I glanced back at the glade and the light of the Heart fading behind us like a dying star. But before it disappeared entirely, I saw something that made my stomach turn cold.

A shape, faint and formless, standing just at the edge of the light. Not Riftborn. Something older. Watching.

I didn’t tell Cael. Not yet.

----------------------------------------------------

By the time we reached the outer ridge, the moons had shifted again, and the silver bleeding back into red. The air carried the tang of ozone and iron. Night in the Lumenwild had teeth now.

Cael set Elara down gently beside a fallen root, brushing stray strands of hair from her forehead. She stirred but didn’t wake. The mark on her chest pulsed faintly through the fabric of her tunic, in time with the distant hum of the Heart.

“She’s stabilizing,” I said. “For now.”

He didn’t respond. His focus was fixed on the horizon, where the forest met the mountains. I followed his gaze and felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.

The Rift wasn’t gone.

It hung there with a tear in the air itself, faint but visible, pulsing with dark light. For every Riftborn she’d burned away, two more shadows lingered, crawling at the edges like maggots around a wound.

“She sealed the Heart,” I said, “but not the Rift.”

“She couldn’t,” he murmured. “Not yet.”

“Not yet? You make it sound like she’ll have to try again.”

He turned to me then, eyes burning gold in the moonlight. “She will. Whether she wants to or not. The Heart’s part of her now. And the Rift—” He looked away. “—is waking.”

I let out a breath, dragging a hand through my hair. “You realize what that means, right? If the Veil keeps thinning, if the Rift spreads, your precious balance between realms won’t matter. Everything burns.”

He didn’t argue. He didn’t have to.

Instead, he crouched beside Elara again and murmured something under his breath, old words, in a language older than the Veil. The mark on her chest dimmed, her breathing steadied, and for the first time since the battle, she looked peaceful.

I stared at them, the soldier and the girl bound to magic neither of them understood, and felt something I hadn’t in a long time with unease.

Because I’d seen this before.

Because once, long ago, a girl with moonlight in her veins had stood at the edge of another Rift, and her fire had consumed an entire city before the Veil silenced her.

I thought that line had ended.

Apparently not.

-------------------------------------------------------

The night deepened.

I made camp quietly while Cael kept watch. The wolves that had survived the battle lingered in the dark, eyes glowing faintly, wary but loyal. The air buzzed with the scent of magic and blood.

“Cael,” I said after a while, breaking the silence, “what if she remembers?”

He glanced at me. “Remembers what?”

“The other life.”

He stilled. For a heartbeat, the wind stopped moving.

“She’s starting to see pieces,” I went on. “The girl in the Mirror Lake. The voice in her dreams. You know as well as I do that those aren’t visions. They’re echoes.”

He looked away, jaw tight. “If she remembers who she was, it could destroy her.”

“Or save us,” I said.

“Or both.”

The fire crackled between us, throwing long shadows that twisted across the roots. Somewhere in the distance, a howl echoed and a lonely, haunting sound. Not Riftborn. Not wolf. Something in between.

“She won’t stay safe here,” I said. “Not with the Rift that close.”

“I know.”

“So what’s your plan?”

His eyes flicked toward me, and for a moment, I saw the Cael I’d known before the Hollow, the one who believed in order, in balance, in duty. That man was gone. The one before me was colder. Sharper.

“We move at dawn,” he said. “To the Sanctum. If the Elders won’t protect her, they’ll at least tell us why the Veil chose her.”

“And if they refuse?”

He drew his blade, the metal humming faintly with golden light. “Then they’ll learn what happens when the Veil ignores its own.”

I grinned, low and feral. “There’s the Cael I remember.”

But even as I said it, something inside me twisted. Because the Cael I remembered wouldn’t have looked at that sleeping girl like she was both salvation and a curse.

-------------------------------------------------------

Dawn came slow and gray.

Elara woke just as the moons began to fade, her eyes opening with a flash of silver that didn’t belong to this world.

She looked from Cael to me, confusion clouding her expression. “Where are we?”

“Safe,” Cael said.

It wasn’t true, but she needed to believe it. For now.

She sat up weakly, glancing toward the horizon, and froze when she saw the Rift. “It’s still there,” she whispered.

“Yes,” I said. “And it’s waiting for you.”

She turned toward me, the Moonfire flickering faintly in her eyes. “Then we don’t have much time.”

Cael met her gaze. “No. We don’t.”

The forest shifted again, as if listening. The Heart’s pulse echoed faintly in the distance, steady and alive. But beneath it, deeper and darker, another rhythm had begun.

The Rift was calling.

And this time, it knew her name.