People claimed Lira smelled of mud and insanity.
They weren't wrong about the mud.
She waded waist-deep through most days, dragging heavy buckets of water, scrubbing grime from cracked wood, and wrangling chickens that bit her fingers like they held grudges from other lives.
But it was the insanity that stung.
Not because it was a lie but because it came from people who used to call themselves friends.
"Still whispering to the heavens, Lira?"
Selin's voice was sharp, polished like honeyed wine poured into a glass with a crack in it.
Beautiful, until it cut.
Lira didn't look up. The sun scorched her neck and shoulders, her back ached like it had borne decades, and her grip on the hoe felt more like holding herself together than tilling soil. Easier to focus on what she could control. The ground was quiet. Honest. When she struck it, it struck back. Fair trade.
Selin stood flanked by Joss and Halwin. the same trio since childhood. But they'd grown up, and Lira had just… stayed. Or maybe she'd fallen. Hard to tell anymore.
"You know what they say," Joss added with a mock smile. "Only witches talk to the wind when it starts answering back."
Lira almost replied. Her mouth opened, then closed again. She knew better.
She lowered the hoe and drove it deeper into the dirt, letting them walk away.
Because the truth?
She did talk to the wind sometimes.
And lately, it whispered her name back.
Greydawn wasn't a village so much as a forgotten bruise on the edge of nowhere. It clung to the curve of the southern plains, wedged between hills that never bloomed and forests that never stopped murmuring. No map marked it. No rider visited twice. Even the birds flew around it like the sky above was cursed.
You worked. You prayed. You died. That was the order of things.
Lira didn't remember her parents. Didn't remember much at all, really.
She was found at five years old near the old chapel, well-soaked, half-starved, with scars on her arms shaped like tangled vines and a silver-threaded pendant knotted tight around her throat.
The priestess named her Lira, after a songbird once said to call down rain during drought. A creature beautiful but far too fragile for the world.
"She's like a fallen star," the priestess used to say. "Too bright to last."
No one said that anymore.
The dreams had returned.
Not soft, wandering dreams. These came with fire and steel.
Vivid. Violent. Real.
A burning castle.
A sword alight with magic.
A name was shouted in a voice that was hers, and yet not like a vow and a curse all at once.
Aelira.
Not Lira.
"Aelira Thorne."
That name stuck to her bones, waking or asleep. It felt true. Like it had lived in her long before she was ever born.
That morning, she'd dreamed of a throne cracked down the center.
Blood soaked the steps. Smoke stained the sky. A man stood before her, sword drawn, eyes empty.
Her voice had rung through the ruin:
"I never begged you to save me."
Then everything burned white.
When she woke, her hands were covered in blood.
No wounds. No pain. Just blood under her nails, across her wrists.
The henhouse was in chaos. Buckets shattered. Fences splintered.
She didn't remember doing anything. But her skin buzzed with a strange heat, and her fingers sparked when she clenched them.
She told no one.
Greydawn didn't trust stories. Or magic. Or girls who dreamed of fire.
Later, she wandered past the chapel's reach and toward the stream beyond the eastern ridge. Few ever came this far. Even fewer came back feeling right.
The stream was shallow today. She knelt beside it and splashed water on her face.
And then she saw it.
Not her reflection, not exactly.
Her eyes, dull brown by habit, flared gold for a heartbeat. Like a flame had passed through them.
She blinked.
Gone.
She looked up.
And froze.
Across the water stood a man. Cloaked in black. Face half-shadowed.
Watching her like he'd spent lifetimes trying to find her.
His presence didn't feel wrong. It felt inevitable.
Her heart kicked like it knew him.
And then he said it:
"Aelira."
The ground pulsed.
Wind slammed through the trees. Water churned in waves around her ankles. Symbols glowing, spinning runes burned in the air between them, floating like ash.
Her pendant went hot, pressing fire against her chest.
The man vanished, not walked or turned. Just ceased.
BOOM.
The sky cracked open.
A spiral of white light tore across the clouds. Her body lifted an inch off the ground, her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes filled with gold, and then
Her voice, yet not her voice…spoke through her.
"Conceived in fire, bound by vow,
Ash to ash, both queen and ghost.
Let gods remember what they made.
When Thorne returns through flame and blade."
She collapsed.
The last thing she saw was the trees charred in a perfect circle around her body.
She didn't walk home. She stumbled. Buzzing all over. Heart too loud. Fingers twitching like they still held lightning.
She barely made it past the chapel gates when the shouting began.
"What did you do?!"
"She's cursed, just like they said!"
"She was glowing!"
Selin's voice cut through them all. "I told you. She's not normal. She's dangerous."
Someone shoved her. Another grabbed her by the arm.
And then
"Kneel!"
The word hit the heir like a sword to the throat.
Everyone turned.
A man stood at the gate. Tall. In dark mage robes. Gold-threaded sigils glowing up his sleeves. Behind him: six guards, armored in silver and crimson, bearing the Crest of the Flame Court.
The mage stepped forward.
His eyes locked on Lira like he'd waited a hundred years to find her.
Then...
He knelt.
Every guard behind him followed, slamming one fist to the earth in reverence.
Gasps broke out like thunder.
Selin's mouth opened, but no sound came. Joss stepped back like she'd touched fire.
The mage spoke.
"We have found the Flameborn Heir."
"The last Thorne. Aelira has returned."
Lira didn't feel like an heir.
She felt like a girl with soil baked into her palms and the taste of copper in her mouth.
She didn't say a word.
But something ancient inside her breathed.