The forest had been thick all morning, its undergrowth clawing at his legs, its shadows folding over him until the path — if there had ever been one — was little more than a suggestion. He moved without hurry, angling toward no particular landmark. Sometimes that was the only way to see something worth finding — to let the land decide instead of forcing your will upon it.
A thin ribbon of light caught his eye, spilling in at an odd angle between two massive cedars. He slowed, the way he might when spotting a ripple in water that didn't belong, and pushed through the narrow gap.
The air changed first.
It grew still, yet not lifeless. There was a density to it, as if the wind here had settled for the long haul. Moss spread thick over the stone beneath his boots, unbroken by bramble or root. A ring of ancient rocks framed the space, some upright, some toppled, their surfaces furred with lichen and faint white veins. The ground swelled gently in the center, a knoll of flat, warm stone ringed by grass worn low, as though the place had been sat upon for centuries.
The boy stopped at the edge, one hand resting on the spear he carried, the other brushing the leather strap of the sword across his back. For a moment, he could almost smell smoke — not the sharp tang of burning wood, but the deeper scent of hearth embers, the kind that clung to wool cloaks and stayed in your hair for days.
It reminded him of the place Matteo had once brought him to — far from the roads, hidden in a fold of land where the wind seemed to bend and the air was thick with something unspoken. Matteo had called it a gathering place for the earth's breath, a point where the world's weight and rhythm pooled. Here, Matteo had told him, you can listen without the noise getting in the way.
He could see Matteo now, crouched on that stone shelf with his eyes closed, hands open on his knees, breathing slow enough that the birds didn't bother to fly off. He had told the boy that fire was never just heat and light — it was hunger, will, memory, and it could be coaxed to grow if you fed it the right way.
The boy stepped forward, feeling the give of moss underfoot until the stone knoll met his boots. He stood there a moment longer, letting the silence sink into him. His loneliness pressed in all at once. Not the cold emptiness of waking alone after a storm, but the ache of having no one to speak to who might answer back. The wolves were the only living company he had now, and even they kept their distance — shadows and eyes in the treeline.
Maybe that's why I keep following them, he thought. They're the only ones who notice if I'm here or gone.
He shifted the spear to rest against a rock and sat cross-legged in the center of the stone, feeling its faint warmth through his trousers. "Stonehearth," he murmured. The name fit before he even understood why. A place of weight and quiet, but with the promise of heat if you knew how to bring it.
He closed his eyes and breathed the way Matteo had taught him — slow, drawing in through the nose, letting it settle deep before sending it back out. He pictured flame the way he had done so many nights at camp, trying to coax it from dry sticks and embers. Only here, the silence made his own heartbeat sound too loud.
He held out a hand, palm up, and willed the heat into it. Nothing came.
Again.
Not even a spark.
The stillness began to fray. His shoulders tightened, and he flexed his fingers as if the motion alone might shake the flame loose. Maybe I've lost it, he thought. Maybe it was never mine to begin with.
A shadow of Matteo's voice came back to him — You don't own fire. You borrow it. You speak to it, not command it.
The boy opened his eyes, staring at the lines in his palm. The truth was, the fire had only truly answered him once without hesitation, without coaxing. The night on the slave ship.
He'd been chained below deck, the stench of rot and saltwater clinging to the air. The guards had laughed over their dice, careless in their cruelty. And then Sigvard's voice — harsh, mocking — carrying from just beyond the barrels. He hadn't seen his face at first, only the boots and the sway of a lantern. The words had been plain: what he'd done to the boy's sister before the raid ended her. The satisfaction in his tone had been worse than the confession itself.
The boy remembered the heat that had risen in his chest then — not the kind that burned skin, but the kind that scalded thought, stripping it down to pure will. The torch flames had seemed to bend toward him in that moment, drawn by something raw and unguarded.
That was the first time the fire had been his without asking.
He closed his eyes again, and this time he did not picture the neat campfires he'd built or the tidy sparks Matteo had coaxed from tinder. He let the memory rise whole and unflinching — Sigvard's smirk, the creak of the ship's hull, the sickness in his stomach, and beneath it all the unyielding need to burn something that had taken too much.
Heat surged through him before he'd even lifted his palm. A thread of light sparked between his fingers, then swelled into a living flame cupped in his hand. It licked upward, golden and steady, no longer the wild burst of panic or rage, but something shaped.
He stared at it, his breath shallow. "You answer to the burn inside," he said quietly. "Not the call of my hands."
The flame wavered as his focus slipped, then steadied again when he fed it another memory — his sister's laughter on the shore, her hair catching the spray as she tried to skip stones, the image torn away by the thought of her gone. The heat flared hotter, brightening until it threw light across the stones.
From the treeline came the soft pad of movement. He didn't turn his head, but his eyes shifted enough to catch it — two wolves, dark shapes against the green, watching from just beyond the ring of rocks. Their ears were forward, their bodies still. When the flame leapt higher, their eyes caught the light, twin embers staring back.
He wondered what they saw — prey, threat, or something in between. But they didn't leave. Not when the flame flickered, not when it died back to a small tongue of gold in his hand.
He practiced until the sun dipped low, calling the flame, letting it go, then calling it again. Each time it came faster, steadier, the space between spark and fire shrinking until he could summon it at will. His arms ached from holding the posture, his mind from holding the images that fed it, but the exhaustion felt clean — the kind that came from building rather than wasting.
When the shadows lengthened, the wolves slipped away as silently as they'd come. He let the last flame gutter out and sat in the dark for a while, feeling the faint warmth of the stone beneath him.
"This is where I'll come," he said into the night. "For all of it. Fire. Earth. Whatever else the world still owes me."
He rose, retrieving his spear, and slung the sword across his back. One last look at the ring of stones — at Stonehearth — and he turned back toward the dim thread of trail that would lead him to camp.
The walk back felt different. Lighter, though his legs were heavy. At camp, he set his things down without fuss, lay back against his bed of furs, and closed his eyes. The memory of flame still burned in his mind's eye, warm and patient.