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**Chapter One: The Whisper of Ashes**
The wind always sang through the old Jacaranda tree by the window—soft, breathy notes that lulled me to sleep each night. My grandmother said the tree had stood longer than the village itself. In the still moments just before dawn, I swore I could hear it whisper my name.
My name is Ailani. I live in a crooked stone cottage on the edge of Eldenridge, where mist rolled in like a secret every morning. My grandmother, Maama Coco, brewed bitter herbs and told stories nobody believed anymore—tales of fire spirits, moon daughters, and bloodlines older than time.
I thought them pretty nonsense.
I never knew my mother. "Gone with the stars," was all Maama ever said. My father? He was a ghost in every tale Maama refused to tell. And so I learned not to ask.
But I felt different. Always had. When I was angry, lights flickered. When I cried, mirrors cracked. Once, when I touched a dying bird, it flapped awake and flew.
Maama only watched and said, *"Some seeds bloom when the fire calls them."*
On the night the cottage burned, the moon was full and red as blood.
I was awake, haunted by dreams that tasted like ash. I stepped outside, barefoot, drawn by a hum that wasn't wind. The trees were too still, the air thick as syrup.
Then the ground cracked.
A pulse—deep and ancient—shook the earth. Flames erupted from nothing, swallowing the cottage in golden light.
I screamed for Maama. Smoke choked my voice. In the chaos, I saw a figure of shifting shadows at the tree line. It raised an arm—and vanished.
When dawn finally crept in, the Jacaranda still stood. But the cottage was nothing but cinders. In the wreckage, a single item remained untouched: an obsidian pendant shaped like a flame, nestled in Maama's old storybook.
I picked it up. It pulsed.
I didn't cry. I didn't run.
I turned toward the horizon and whispered, "He'll know. My father will know."
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