Chapter Six
The scream echoed through the valley like a bell cracked by time. It shattered roosting birds from trees, silenced insects, and turned the red haze above into swirling ash.
The fire-child collapsed, clutching her head. Her flames flared out violently, licking the base of the Lantern Tree before drawing back into her body. She trembled, not from pain—but from something older.
Recognition.
"Who is she?" Amira whispered, kneeling beside her.
The fire-child's voice was a whisper drowned in memory. "She was my mother… before they unmade her."
Amira's heart stilled.
Asheron turned slowly. "The High Sealer… was your kin?"
The child nodded. "She gave me to the covenant-makers. Not to destroy me… but to bind the world from breaking. They broke her voice so she could never tell the truth."
Elias stepped forward. "Then why is she leading them now?"
"Because she thinks I am no longer me," the child said. "And because she has forgotten love."
As the Bone-Faced Ones drew closer, the villagers gathered. Some prepared weapons—machetes, enchanted flint bows, ancestral masks. Others carved protective glyphs into the earth or offered prayers to the restless ancestors.
But the Lantern Tree kept bleeding.
Its sap ran along the village paths like rivulets of molten gold. Children dipped their fingers in it and dreamed of forgotten names. Elders sang lullabies to trees that bent toward the oncoming storm.
Amira stood atop the Circle Rock with Nnenna, Asheron, and Elias beside her.
"We cannot outrun this," Nnenna said.
"We don't need to," Amira replied. "This isn't an invasion. It's a reckoning. And reckoning doesn't come for land—it comes for memory."
Elias gripped her hand. "Then let's remember loudly."
That night, the fire-child woke in Amira's hut with a vision.
"They're coming with the mask to bind me again," she whispered. "But the mask is no longer just clay. It's fed by forgotten grief. It holds the faces of all who died in silence."
She rose, barefoot, and walked out into the square.
All torches dimmed as she passed. Even the moon bowed behind the clouds.
She stepped to the center of the village, knelt, and touched the earth. The sap from the Lantern Tree surged toward her, forming a glowing circle around her body.
"I will not run. I will not hide. If they come to take me, they must first remember who they were before they became bone."
The Bone-Faced Ones arrived at dawn.
Their numbers were not endless—but they felt infinite. Each wore a carved skull-mask etched with sacred marks. At their center stood the voiceless priestess, white flames rising from her robes.
She stepped forward.
The village stood still.
Amira did not move. The fire-child stood beside her.
The priestess raised the broken clay mask, the same one from the cave—the same that once bore Asheron's name.
The fire-child took a step forward.
"You don't remember me," she said softly.
The priestess paused.
"You don't remember how you sang me to sleep. How your voice smelled like honey and rivers. How you wept when they took me into the cave."
The fire-child's flames flickered—not with rage, but with sorrow.
"They told you I was dangerous. They told you I would break the world. But I never broke anything. I only wanted to be loved."
The priestess trembled. Her sewn lips quivered, and the fire around her dimmed.
The fire-child raised her hands—not in defiance, but in offering.
"Remember me."
And for the first time in decades, the priestess lowered the mask.
Her hands shook.
She reached up—and tore the threads from her lips.
The gasp from the Bone-Faced Ones was collective. The very earth seemed to freeze.
The priestess coughed blood—then spoke.
A single word.
"Aruwé."
The fire-child's name.
The mask shattered.
And in that instant, the army of Bone-Faced Ones knelt in silence.
Because the war had never been against the fire.
It had been against forgetting.