Sylara Thorne, Age 7 | Riftkeep
Riftkeep breathed.
Not like a fortress, but like a thing long-buried and still half-alive. Its corridors pulsed faintly, veins of soft firelight running through the blackstone beneath my feet. I didn't know if it was magic or something older—hungrier—but I felt it every time I touched a wall. I wondered if the walls could feel me back.
They placed me in the East Wing with the other fireborne, though I knew even then I didn't belong. They were all older, marked, trained in the rites. I had no sigils etched into my skin, no bonded flame familiar. I hadn't even seen real fire magic—not the kind that lived and whispered and chose you.
Still, Riftkeep accepted me.
It did not test me. It watched.
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The fireborne were not like the children from the House of the Orphaned Flame. They weren't afraid of me—they didn't care at all.
At least , for now.
Here, indifference was a kind of mercy. I was too quiet to provoke and too strange to pity.
My days began with the Flaring: standing before the Ember Altar in silence until your heat revealed itself. For most of them, it flared quickly—hands glowing, sigils rising, flames dancing in lines of taught precision.
For me? Nothing. At least, not the way they expected.
No visible spark. No dancing light. But the stone beneath me always warmed. Not visibly, not dangerously—but deeply. Once, Master Serro laid his hand on it after I stepped down. He jerked back, gaze sharp. Said nothing. But I never stood at the altar unsupervised again.
The truth was: something older moved inside me. Not fire in the way the others wielded it. Mine curled silver-orange at the edges of my vision, like memory or stormlight.
I dreamed of bones and wolves.
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Master Serro gave lectures on the Old Pantheon. The gods who broke the world and stitched it back with lies and longing.
There was Vherion, the Ash-Eater, god of ruin and rebirth.
Eileva, the Veiled Flame, whose tears became stars.
Orusk, the Hunger Unbound, chained in the Hollow's marrow.
And Myrrh, the Dream-Wolf, who walked backward through time to guard the end of all things.
Most had temples now in ruin. Faith had become a thing traded in whispers and runes carved under the tongue. Still, people lit tokens at dusk. Still, the gods lingered.
I felt closest to Myrrh. They said she walked in dreams and carried secrets in her fur. I didn't pray, but sometimes I whispered to the wind at night.
And the wind listened.
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They told us the Hollow was a wound. A place where reality thinned and gods bled. We were not to look upon it too long, lest it look back.
But I always heard it—whispers when the wind was still. Sometimes it said my name. Sometimes it said my mother's.
The masters said the Hollow birthed the world. Others said it was a grave. Either way, the magic came from it—filtered through old runes, bound into stone and flame and flesh. Most of Riftkeep's wards were drawn in Hollow-script, bleeding gold when touched. But the deep scripts—those carved into bone, those humming in sleep—those pulsed silver.
I once traced one in a dream. Woke up with my fingertips glowing faintly, scent of frost on my breath.
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Riftkeep's food was bitter and strange. Skyroot stew. Hollowberries that pulsed if you bit them too slowly. Rimebread that bled faint light when torn. Nothing tasted right, but I never starved.
The others devoured everything like hunger was a second soul. I ate in silence, watching them, cataloguing names and runes and scars. Some were already bonded to creatures—firelings, sparkcats, embercrows. But no wolves. No silence-walkers. No one like me.
Some stared back with blank suspicion. Others with curiosity.
But Tavian—a boy with burn-scars and gold eyes—watched me too closely. He asked strange questions. Once whispered, "They say flamebound can't hear the Hollow. But you flinch when it speaks."
I didn't answer.
He smiled. "You're not flameborne. You're something older."
---
She stirred often now. Not as a voice or shape—but as instinct. When I was threatened, the world tilted. When someone lied to me, their mouth moved in reverse. When I closed my eyes, I saw through frost-dimmed eyes, felt the crunch of ash-grass beneath paws.
I didn't know what she was called yet. I only knew she was mine. Hidden. Waiting.
They said familiars came in a burst of flame when the soul reached maturity. I knew mine would not come like fire. She would come like the end of silence. Like a door opening in a room I'd lived in all my life without noticing it had one.
By the end of my third week, I was dreaming in rune-patterns and waking with frost on my lashes. The fire-altar still didn't burn for me. But the mirrors around it fogged when I passed.
Master Serro began recording my footsteps. I caught him once—his hands covered in silver chalk, murmuring to the walls as I passed. I didn't stop him.
Let them watch.
Let them wonder.
I would not be defined by fire.
Because flame dies.
But shadow?
Shadow remembers.
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