Morning in Ashfen no longer smelled right.
It should have been ash and bread, steel and river mist. Instead, Mira woke to the bite of winter on her window, though summer had barely ripened. Frost feathered the glass in branching veins, pale against the rising sun.
She lay still beneath her blanket, hand curled around the faint ember-sapling she had conjured the night before. Its glow had dulled but not vanished; tiny leaves pulsed softly with each of her breaths. The thing felt alive—more than alive, it felt as though it was listening.
And Brenn had nearly told her to let herself burn.
The thought burned sharper than the cold. She rose, wrapping herself in her patched wool cloak, and tucked the sapling beneath cloth, hidden against her ribs.
When she pushed open the forge door, the air stabbed her lungs. The cobbled lane glittered white, brittle ice creeping over stone. Neighbors clustered in knots, stamping their feet, muttering about wells crusting over and buckets freezing solid overnight.
Lysa spotted her first. "Mira! There you are."
She hurried over, hair unbraided for once, face flushed pink with cold. Her hands cradled her brother's, blowing on them to keep him warm.
"Did you sleep?" she asked softly.
Mira shook her head. Words caught in her throat.
Lysa touched her arm. "They're whispering about what happened. About you. Don't listen."
The square was buzzing—half in awe, half in suspicion. Mira felt eyes prickle her skin wherever she turned. Gratitude for saving the boy warred with fear of what she'd shown them.
Brenn appeared then, looming, his expression grimmer than frostbite. "Back inside," he barked. "Both of you. Idle chatter won't thaw wells."
Lysa scowled but obeyed. Mira followed, pulse quickening.
Inside the forge, Brenn lit the hearth. The flames sputtered against the damp, reluctant to catch. "The cold's wrong," he muttered. "It doesn't feel like winter. It feels… hungry."
Mira hesitated, then whispered, "What if it's tied to me?"
His shoulders stiffened. Hammer met anvil with a crack. "Don't flatter yourself, girl. The world has bigger curses than you."
But his tone wasn't conviction. It was fear.
The council chamber smelled of old smoke and damp wool.
Ashfen's hall was no palace, just a longhouse with walls patched from storms and a roof blackened by decades of hearthfires. But today, every bench was full. Men and women sat hunched in cloaks, breath fogging the air, their eyes restless as sparrows.
At the head of the table sat Warden Halric, broad as a timber post, his beard streaked with gray. He rapped his knuckles against the oak board to call silence.
"The wells froze again last night," he said. "The south pasture's stream too. We've driven frost from Ashfen before, aye, but never in the height of summer." His gaze swept the room. "This isn't weather. It's something worse."
A low murmur rippled through the chamber. Mira, standing at the back with Lysa, felt the words settle heavy in her chest.
One farmer rose, fists clenched. "My barley's gone brittle in the ground. Do we wait until the harvest rots to act? We've families to feed!"
"Act how?" another shouted. "Strike the frost with hoes? Pray harder?"
The bickering grew sharper, until Brenn's voice cut across it like an axe. "Enough."
He had taken a seat closer to the front, hammer still slung across his back, a black smear on his jaw where he'd wiped at soot. "Frost doesn't crawl downriver like a beast unless driven. Something drives it."
Halric nodded slowly. "Aye. The emissary's parchment warned of northern ice. Perhaps it's spilling further than we thought."
A voice from the benches piped up, trembling but fierce. "Or perhaps it came here. With her."
Mira froze.
Every face turned, too quick, too eager. The villager who'd spoken—Ceryn, a potter whose kiln she had repaired last winter—stared at her with wide, frightened eyes.
"I saw it," Ceryn whispered. "The fire that wasn't fire. Her hands blooming green. Flames that grew instead of burning. And now the frost. You think it's a coincidence?"
Lysa stepped forward, cheeks burning. "She saved your son's life!"
"She cursed us while doing it," Ceryn shot back. "What kind of blessing freezes a whole well overnight?"
The chamber erupted into argument. Some defended Mira, recalling her work at the forge, her kindness with children. Others muttered of dryads—half-remembered tales of trees that walked and people swallowed whole by roots. Old stories with teeth that bit hardest when fear gnawed.
Mira's stomach twisted. She wanted to vanish, to melt into the timber walls. But the ember-sapling beneath her cloak pulsed warm, as though reminding her it existed, as though it belonged.
Halric's voice boomed above the din. "Sit down! This is no witch-hunt." His glare pinned Ceryn, then softened, but only slightly. "Fear's a sickness. Don't let it spread. Until we know more, we hold together."
He looked at Mira then—direct, heavy, assessing. "But the girl stays watched. Closely. For her own safety. And ours."
Mira's skin prickled. Watched. As though she were some dangerous tool to be locked away.
The meeting broke apart in grumbles and shuffles of boots. Lysa seized Mira's hand, tugging her toward the door. Brenn followed, his jaw tight, saying nothing.
Outside, the frost had grown bolder. Ice clung to the thatch of roofs, glittered like spilled salt across the square. Chickens pecked at the frozen earth, confused and restless.
Mira leaned against the hall's timber frame, fighting the press of breath in her lungs. Snatches of conversation drifted around her as people dispersed:
"…fire that sprouted green, I tell you…"
"…never seen the river so still, not in my father's time…"
"…if it spreads to the woods, what then? No timber, no heat, no life…"
Her name surfaced again and again, sometimes whispered, sometimes spat.
Lysa squeezed her hand hard. "Ignore them. They're frightened, that's all."
"They're frightened of me," Mira said, voice low.
Brenn shifted beside them, uneasy. "The warden was right about one thing. Fear spreads faster than frost. Keep your head down. Don't give them reason to think worse."
"But I did this, didn't I?" The words tore out before she could stop them. "The fire. The sap. It's tied to me. What if the frost is too?"
Brenn's silence was answer enough. His face was carved from stone, but the tightness around his eyes betrayed him.
Mira pulled her hand from Lysa's grasp, staring at her palms. The skin looked ordinary. Calloused from the forge, faintly scarred, knuckles cracked from hammerwork. But she remembered the green flame unfurling there like a secret blooming, remembered the sapling refusing to burn.
A miracle. Or a curse. Depending on who told the tale.
The cold wind bit her cheeks, and Mira knew that Ashfen had already chosen its story.
The forge should have been a place of comfort. Heat, rhythm, work that quieted the mind. For Mira, it had always been so. But tonight the bellows wheezed like an old man's lungs, and every strike of her hammer rang hollow.
The iron on the anvil glowed a dull orange, refusing to take shape beneath her blows. Sparks died too quickly, vanishing into the frost that crept through the cracks of the shutters. The forge fire sulked low, as if afraid to burn.
She leaned on the hammer, breath catching, the echo of the council's whispers still clinging to her ears. Witch. Curse. Watched.
Brenn sat on the bench across the room, arms folded, pretending to mend a pair of tongs. In truth, his eyes never left her. Every movement weighed, measured.
Finally Mira dropped the hammer and slumped against the wall. "You don't have to sit guard like that."
Brenn grunted. "Didn't say I was."
"You don't need to. If you're afraid of me, just say so."
The silence stretched, filled with the hiss of dying coals. Then he sighed, rubbing a scar that ran the length of his forearm. "Fear's not the word. Worry, maybe. You've always had more fire in you than most. Now it's showing itself. That doesn't make you a monster."
"Tell that to Ceryn," Mira muttered.
"I'd rather tell it to you," Brenn said, voice rough. He stood, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder. "Whatever this is—curse, gift, I don't care—it's yours. You learn to wield it, not hide from it. But you've got to be careful. Power draws eyes. Some want to cut it out. Others want to use it."
His hand lingered a moment, then fell away. "Get some rest. I'll keep the forge warm as I can."
He left without another word, the door thudding shut behind him. Mira sank to the floor, the ember-sapling hidden beneath her cloak pressing gently against her ribs, a heartbeat not her own.
Later that night, Lysa slipped into the forge, carrying a small basket wrapped in cloth.
"You look like ash," she said, setting the bundle down. Inside was bread, still warm, and a wedge of cheese. "So I thought: what do you do when frost bites? You fight it with comfort food."
Mira almost laughed, almost cried. "You shouldn't be here. People will talk."
"They already are," Lysa said breezily, plopping down cross-legged on the floor. "So let them. If they want to waste their breath, it means they're still alive, doesn't it?"
Mira tore off a piece of bread, chewing without tasting. Her hands trembled. "You heard them. They'll turn on me."
"They won't," Lysa said firmly. Then, softer: "Not all of them."
Mira met her eyes. Lysa's gaze was steady, blue as summer sky, and for a moment Mira let herself believe it. That she wasn't alone. That friendship could hold back fear.
They shared the bread in silence, the warmth between them small but stubborn against the cold pressing at the shutters.
When the first sound came, Mira thought it was thunder. A deep, rolling crack that rattled the forge walls. Then another, sharper, like glass splintering across the sky.
Lysa leapt to her feet. "What was—"
The ground shuddered. A thin veil of frost spread across the forge floor in an instant, hissing where it touched the coals. Mira ran to the door, yanking it open.
The night was alive with light.
North of the village, beyond the river, the sky tore open in a jagged column of crystal. It speared upward from the earth, taller than any tower, glimmering with cold fire. Shards cascaded from it, singing as they fell, embedding themselves into soil and timber alike. Where they struck, frost blossomed outward in circles of ice.
The shardfall.
Mira's heart slammed against her ribs. She had seen a single spike before, distant, lonely. This was different. This was an invasion.
Villagers poured into the square, torches flaring weakly against the pale glow. Shouts echoed, prayers tangled with curses. Children cried.
And over it all, Mira heard a voice—low, reverent, fearful—from somewhere in the crowd: "It's her. She brought this."
Lysa grabbed her arm, nails biting through cloth. "Don't listen—"
But Mira couldn't tear her eyes from the towering shard. The sapling-flame under her cloak pulsed hot, aching, as though answering the ice.
The frost was not just creeping anymore. It was here, staking its claim.
And Mira knew, with bone-deep certainty, that Ashfen would never look at her the same again.