The fire called her name again. But this time, it called her "Leira", a name she could hear and she heard it clearly.
Flames curled around her like living breath, their heat pressing against her ribs, every heartbeat echoing through the ash-thick air.
Kael couldn't hear her scream. No one could.
Only the fire answered.
It spoke in cracks and sighs, in the rhythm of her pulse. The world beyond her vision had vanished, replaced by endless crimson light and drifting ash. Every breath burned. Every sound came from the blaze itself, whispering secrets that pulled her deeper in.
She turned slowly, the ground shifting beneath her feet like molten glass, fragile and alive. The air shimmered, bending the edges of everything she saw until it felt like she was standing in a memory… or a dream pretending to be one.
Her name echoed again, clearer this time, soft but commanding.
Leira.
She froze.
That voice, she knew that voice.
Out of the rolling waves of flame, a shape began to form. A figure. Tall. Familiar. Moving with a grace that made her chest ache before she could even understand why.
Her throat tightened.
"Kael?" she called, though her voice was more breath than sound.
The figure stepped forward, and her heart stopped. It wasn't Kael. It couldn't be.
The smile was wrong; gentler, sharper somehow. The tilt of the head, the eyes that caught the firelight… they didn't belong to Kael.
"Cassian," she whispered.
The name left her lips before her mind recognised him, her heart did. It was a reflex, pure and unguarded. And when she spoke it, the flames flared, roaring like a living thing.
The figure smiled wider. "You remember."
Her pulse stumbled. "No… I… this isn't real."
He stepped closer. The fire bent around him, feeding on the space between them. Every movement he made stirred the embers like a breath of wind through dry leaves.
"Isn't it?" he asked softly. "You know what's real, Leira. You always have."
Her hands shook. The heat bit at her skin, but it wasn't the fire that made her tremble, it was him. The way he looked at her, like he could see through every wall she'd ever built.
A flicker of memory hit her.
A pair of hands reaching for hers.
A promise whispered in the dark.
Then… pain.
The image shattered as quickly as it came.
Leira staggered back, gripping her chest. "You're not him," she said through her teeth. "You're not real."
The fire's voice seemed to twist around his. "Then what am I?"
She couldn't answer.
Her mind spun. The heat, the light, it wasn't just outside her; it was inside her, coiling in her lungs, threading through her veins. The longer she stood here, the harder it was to think.
Then the whisper came again, not from him but from the fire itself.
Find the truth buried in flame.
Her eyes widened. The trial. The second echo.
Kael's words came back to her, faint and blurred by the smoke:
"…Each piece hid itself behind a trial..."
Her fingers curled.
A shard of light. Somewhere in this inferno, another piece of her waited.
Cassian, or whatever wore his face, watched her with something close to pity. "You can't take it," he said softly. "You don't even remember who you are."
"Then remind me," she snapped.
He tilted his head, eyes glinting. "You wouldn't survive the truth."
The ground rippled beneath her, molten and trembling. The flames surged higher, circling them both. Every step she took toward him, the fire grew more violent, as if daring her to go on.
Leira forced herself forward. "You're not real," she whispered again, but her voice shook. "You're just the test."
The fire laughed through him. "Maybe. Or maybe I'm what's left of the man who bested you… I broke you."
The words hit like a blade.
A flash. Screaming. Blood and smoke. Her own voice calling out into nothing.
She gasped, clutching her temples. The memory tore through her, half-formed but sharp enough to hurt.
"Stop it!" she cried.
Cassian stepped closer, eyes glinting through the fire. "You don't belong here, Leira. You wear destruction like a cloak. All you do is burn, and everything you touch turns to ash."
The fire roared with his words. Ash and light swirled violently around her, tugging at her hair, burning her skin. The world tilted, bending under the weight of her fear.
Her knees hit the ground.
No. Focus.
She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing herself to breathe through the pain. Her mark pulsed faintly, golden light flickering through the soot covering her wrist. The shard was near, she could feel it.
"Stop running from it," the fire hissed. "You know what happens when you open your eyes."
Leira's breath came fast, her lungs fighting the smoke. "I'm not afraid of you."
The figure tilted its head. "You should be."
Flames surged upward, swallowing him whole. For a heartbeat, she thought he was gone, but then his voice echoed behind her, calm, too close.
"You'll never find it if you keep pretending you're someone else."
She turned sharply, but he wasn't there. The fire itself had taken his shape now, twisting, shifting, forming faces that were hers, his, Kael's…everyone she had ever lost.
Her heart pounded in her ears. Her mind screamed for her to wake, but she couldn't. The trial wouldn't let her.
Then something clicked inside her. A thread of calm, faint but steady. The shard was calling, quietly, persistently. Not from the fire, but beneath it.
She drew a shaky breath and lowered her head. "You want me to burn," she said softly. "But fire only destroys what's weak."
The inferno stilled, just for a moment.
Leira opened her eyes, glowing faintly with the mark's light. "And I'm not weak."
The ground erupted beneath her feet, heat and light crashing through the space around her. The voice screamed, his voice, her fear, everything she'd buried, but she pushed forward, through it, through him.
The fire clawed at her arms, tearing at her sleeves, searing her skin, but she didn't stop. She reached into the blaze, where the pulse of the shard beat like a heart.
The voice tried one last time. "Leira!"
But this time, she didn't listen.
"I am stronger than you think," she said, her voice steady even as the world around her burned.
Her fingers closed around the shard.
Light burst outward; pure, endless, searing. The fire screamed, the world trembling under the sound. Heat crashed against her skin, the flames rising higher, brighter, almost blinding.
But she didn't flinch.
She stepped forward, right into the blaze.
The light swallowed her whole.