The mountain screamed.
Kaelen heard it with his whole body—not sound but pressure, something ancient and enormous pushing against the world from inside. His bones vibrated. His teeth ached. The ground beneath his feet turned liquid, and he ran because running was the only thing left.
Mina's hand in his. Mira's weight against his side. The river somewhere ahead, hidden behind walls of smoke and falling ash.
We're going to die, he thought. We're going to die and it's going to hurt and there's nothing—
"K-Kaelen!" Mina's voice, high and terrified. "The ground—"
He looked down.
The ash beneath them was moving. Not shifting—flowing, like water finding its level, like something underneath was pushing up. Cracks spread across its surface, each one glowing orange with heat.
"Faster," he gasped. "We have to go f-faster."
Mira's leg. He'd forgotten about Mira's leg. She was limping, dragging, her face gray with pain and blood loss. Mina was half-carrying her, but Mina was nine, small, exhausted.
We're not going to make it.
The thought sat in his chest like a stone.
We're not going to make it and it's my fault because I couldn't—I can't—
"We're n-n-not stopping," he said. The words came out fierce, surprising him. "We're n-not—"
The world tilted.
Not metaphorically. The ground tilted, a whole section of riverbank sliding sideways into nothing, and Kaelen felt his feet leave the earth, felt Mina's hand torn from his, felt Mira's weight disappear—
He fell.
---
The lava was warm.
That was his first thought. Not hot—not the searing, flesh-melting heat he'd always imagined—but warm, like bathwater, like the heated stones his mother used to warm their hut in winter.
His second thought was: I'm in lava. I'm dying. This is dying.
He tried to scream. No sound came out. The warm red-orange surrounded him, pressed against him, filled him, and he couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything except sink.
This is it. This is the end. Our own goddess killed us. The fire we worshipped—the fire we fed our whole lives—
Something touched his hand.
Through the lava, through the warmth, through the drowning dark—a hand. Small. Cold. Mina.
He grabbed it.
Grabbed her and held on and refused to let go even as the lava pulled them deeper, even as his lungs screamed for air that wouldn't come, even as everything went dark.
---
"Interesting."
The knight-commander sat on his horse at the edge of what had been Ash Valley, watching the mountain burn. Behind him, his men fled in every direction, their discipline shattered, their orders forgotten.
He didn't care. Let them run. He had seen what they hadn't.
"That mountain hasn't erupted in three hundred years." He spoke to no one, his voice calm, almost thoughtful. "The king's scholars studied it for decades. Determined it was dormant. Inactive. Dead."
The mountain roared again. A pillar of fire shot toward the sky, and the knight-commander felt something he hadn't felt in years.
Fear.
"This land is filled with mana crystals," he murmured. "Enough to fuel an army for generations. Enough to—"
Another roar. Another pillar. The ground shook so violently his horse staggered.
"And now it's all buried." He laughed, short and bitter. "What a shame. What a waste."
He turned his horse away from the fire.
Behind him, the mountain burned on.
---
Kaelen opened his eyes.
He was alive.
The thought arrived slowly, disbelief wrapped in confusion. He was alive, and he was lying on stone, and the air was cool and still and silent in a way that made his ears ring.
Alive. How?
He sat up.
Stone surrounded him. Not the rough volcanic rock of the valley, but smooth stone—worked stone, shaped by hands or something older than hands. Walls that curved gently, meeting in a ceiling he couldn't quite see. Light came from everywhere and nowhere, a soft orange glow that seemed to seep from the stone itself.
Where—
Mina.
He found her crumpled against one wall, her body small and still. He crawled to her—his limbs heavy, his movements slow—and pressed his fingers to her neck the way he'd seen the healers do.
A pulse. Weak, but there.
"Mina." His voice cracked. "Mina, w-wake up. Please—"
She stirred. Moaned. Her eyes fluttered open.
"K-Kaelen?" She looked around, confused. "Where—what—"
"I d-don't know. Just—just stay still. Rest."
She nodded, her eyes already closing again. Alive. She was alive.
Mira.
He found her near the center of the chamber, sprawled on her back, her face peaceful in a way that terrified him. Her leg—
He stopped.
Her leg.
The wound was gone. Not healed—gone, as if it had never been. Where blood had flowed, clean skin. Where bone had showed, smooth flesh. Nothing remained except a thin scar, silver against her skin, like a memory of pain.
"Mira?" He touched her shoulder. "Mira, c-can you hear me?"
Her eyes opened.
For a moment, she just looked at him—confused, disoriented, afraid. Then her hand went to her leg.
"This isn't—" She sat up, too fast, nearly fell. "This isn't possible. I was—I was bleeding. I was—"
"It's g-gone." Kaelen didn't know what else to say. "The w-wound. It's just... g-gone."
Mira stared at her leg. Touched the scar. Touched it again.
"How?"
He didn't answer. He couldn't.
---
Mina woke properly a few minutes later. When she saw Mira's leg—saw the healed skin, the impossible scar—she did the only thing she could.
She started crying.
Not the quiet tears of grief. The loud, ugly, helpless crying of a child who has seen too much and understood too little. It went on and on, her whole body shaking, her breath coming in gasps that sounded like drowning.
Kaelen didn't know what to do.
Comfort her, he thought. Say something. Do something. You're the only one—
But his mouth wouldn't work. His arms wouldn't move. He sat beside her, frozen, useless, while she cried and cried and cried.
Then Mira moved.
She crawled to Mina—slowly, her healed leg still weak—and wrapped her arms around her. Held her. Rocked her. Said nothing, just held.
Mina clung to her like a drowning child to driftwood.
"They're gone," Mina whispered. "Dorn's gone. Ruk's gone. Everyone's—they're all—"
"I know." Mira's voice was steady, but her eyes were wet. "I know."
"My parents—my parents—"
"I know."
The words weren't enough. They couldn't be enough. But they were something, and something was all they had.
Mina cried until she couldn't cry anymore. Then she lay against Mira, exhausted, empty, alive.
And Kaelen watched them both, and felt nothing except a vast, hollow nothing where his heart should be.
They're dead, he thought. Dorn is dead. Ruk is dead. My parents are probably dead. Everyone I've ever known is dead, and I'm sitting in a cave, and I can't even cry.
He tried to feel something. Grief. Rage. Anything.
Nothing came.
What's wrong with me? Why can't I—
A sound.
Not from the chamber—from inside him. A vibration, a resonance, a presence that pressed against his spine and whispered in his blood.
Then the voice came.
---
It wasn't sound. Not really. It was feeling—words that traveled through bone and breath and the space between thoughts, arriving fully formed in places too deep for language.
Children.
Kaelen's body went rigid. Mina gasped. Mira's arms tightened around her, but her face showed the same terror Kaelen felt.
Children of Ash Valley. Children of my fire.
The voice was a woman's. Old—impossibly old—and pained. Each word carried weight, carried hurt, as if speaking cost her something she couldn't afford.
"Wh-who—" Kaelen's voice failed. He tried again. "Wh-who are you?"
A pause. A sigh that shook the chamber.
You know who I am. You've always known. You prayed to me once, child. By the river. Do you remember?
Kaelen's breath stopped.
The goddess, he thought. The goddess of fire. The one who—the one who never answered.
"You—you're—"
I am what your people have worshipped for four hundred years. I am the fire in the mountain. I am the warmth in the kiln. I am— A pause, heavy with something that might have been shame. I am a prisoner.
Mira spoke. Her voice was steadier than Kaelen expected.
"A prisoner? Of what?"
Of myself. Of the fire that burns in me. Of the First Fire that put me here to guard this mountain and never—never—
The voice broke. For a moment, there was only silence and the weight of something immense struggling to hold itself together.
I have been here for four hundred years. Alone. In pain. The fire in me grows and grows and I cannot—I cannot—
"Can't what?" Mina's voice, small and scared.
I cannot die.
The words landed like stones.
I cannot die and I cannot leave and the fire keeps growing and every year it hurts more and I thought—I thought if I could just hold on—if I could just wait—
"Wait for what?" Kaelen asked.
A long pause.
For you.
---
The chamber seemed to pulse with those words.
For you.
Kaelen felt his mind rebel. For us? We're children. We're nothing. We're—
"I d-don't understand," he said. "Why us? Why n-now?"
Because you're here. Because you survived. Because— The voice softened, became almost gentle. Because you prayed to me, child. You prayed, and I heard, and I could not answer. But I *remembered. *
Kaelen thought of that day by the river. The tears. The begging. The silence.
You were the first one in decades to pray for something other than victory in battle or wealth or power. You prayed to be normal. You prayed to be accepted. You prayed to be *loved .
His eyes burned.
And I could not help you then. But I can help you now. If you will help me.
Mira leaned forward. "Help you how?"
The First Fire imprisoned me here. Bound me to this mountain. Made me its keeper—its prisoner. For four hundred years, I have tended the flame, watched it grow, felt it burn me from inside. And I am tired, children. I am so tired.
"Tired enough to die?" Mina asked.
Tired enough to want to.
Silence.
But I cannot die. Not alone. Not without help. The bindings that hold me can only be broken by those who carry my fire—by those who have survived my fire. And you three—you fell into my heart and you *lived .
Kaelen remembered the lava. The warmth that should have killed them. The hand he'd grabbed in the dark.
"You saved us," he whispered.
I tried. I didn't know if I could. I'm not—I'm not good at saving. I've only ever burned.
"B-but you d-did. You saved us."
Yes. A pause. I saved you. And now I'm asking you to save me.
---
Mina started crying again. Softer this time—exhaustion, fear, the sheer weight of everything.
"We're children," Mira said. Her voice was flat, practical, the voice of someone trying to hold onto logic in a world that had abandoned it. "We can't even use fire properly. We're crawlers. How could we possibly—"
You will learn.
"Learn? From who?"
From me.
The chamber seemed to brighten. The orange glow deepened, warmed, pulsed.
I will teach you. All of you. I will give you what I have—what I am—and you will grow. Crawler. Sensing mana. Awakener. Ascended. Transcendent. Supreme. Sovereign.
The seven stages. Kaelen's mind flashed to the children in the hollow, to Ruk's desperate flame, to Dorn's final moments.
You will climb where your village could not. You will become what your people never could. And when you are strong enough—when you have mastered the fire I give you—you will return to this mountain, and you will break my bonds, and you will let me *die .
"Die?" Mina's voice cracked. "But you're a goddess. You're supposed to—"
I am supposed to be free. The voice was sharp now, cutting. I am supposed to be more than a prison for a fire I never wanted. I am supposed to—
It stopped. When it spoke again, it was softer.
I am sorry. I forget—you are children. You have lost everything. And I am asking you to carry more.
Kaelen felt something shift in his chest. That hollow nothing—it was still there. But beneath it, something else stirred. Something that felt almost like...
Hope?
"The others," he said. "The v-villagers. Are they—"
A long pause.
I cannot control the fire. Not fully. Not yet. When I reached for you—when I pulled you into my heart—the mountain... reacted.
"Are they dead?"
Silence.
Yes.
The word hung in the air like smoke.
I am sorry. I am so sorry. I tried to save more. I tried to—but I couldn't. I can't. The fire is too strong, and I am too weak, and—
"It's okay."
Everyone looked at Kaelen.
He didn't know where the words came from. He didn't know why he'd said them. But as they left his mouth, he felt something loosen in his chest.
"It's o-okay. You tried. You s-saved us." He looked at Mina, at Mira. "You saved us. That's—that's s-something."
Mira stared at him. Her eyes were unreadable.
"You're comforting a goddess," she said. "You're standing in the heart of a mountain, talking to a being of pure fire, and you're comforting her."
Kaelen blinked. "I—I g-guess?"
For the first time since they'd entered the chamber, Mira's lips twitched. Not a smile—not quite—but something close.
"You're strange, Kaelen Vorec."
"I kn-know."
The goddess's voice returned, warm now, almost amused.
Strange. Yes. But strange is what I need. Strange is what has been missing for four hundred years.
The chamber brightened further. Shapes formed in the stone—images, symbols, writing that Kaelen couldn't read but somehow understood.
Stay here, the goddess said. Rest. Heal. Learn. The world outside will wait—it always does. And when you are ready, you will leave this place, and you will become what you were always meant to be.
"What's that?" Mina asked.
Survivors. Growers. Fire-touched. My children, in truth if not in blood.
Kaelen felt the warmth surround him. Felt Mina lean against his shoulder. Felt Mira's hand find his and hold on.
Rest now, the goddess whispered. When you wake, we begin.
And for the first time in as long as he could remember, Kaelen closed his eyes and slept without dreaming.
---