—Blood and fire drowned the tribe, yet the boy's eyes still burned.
The night was a black curtain torn apart by flames. The wind swept across the steppe, carrying the stench of dry grass and ash. From the darkness came the low rumble of horns, like some ancient beast beating its chest.
Luo Chen stood atop the wooden palisade, knuckles pale as he clenched his spear. His shoulders were still narrow, too young to bear the weight of this night, yet the darkness pressed down until he could hardly stand. Beneath him, the elder whispered ancient prayers for protection; behind him, his father whetted his axe, each rasp of iron on wood grating against Luo Chen's heartbeat. He swallowed hard, throat dry.
The sea of fire surged from the horizon. Countless torches swept forward like a storm of falling stars. Mounted silhouettes flickered in and out of the glow, armor gleaming coldly in the blaze. The banners of the steppe riders snapped in the wind, wolf bone ornaments clattering. On the opposite ridge, the silver-armored knights of the Radiant Cross formed a shining line, swords raised in prayer. Their solemn hymn drowned the screams, unrolling like a cold, white scroll across the night.
"They are here." The elder's voice was hoarse from a lifetime, but his words carried the weight of death. The flames reflected in his murky eyes, painting the tribe's totem pole into a weary old man who could no longer lift his head.
The first fire arrow struck the haystack inside the walls, hissing as it devoured moisture before exploding into flame. Tongues of fire leapt up, red serpents licking from eaves to beams. Cries burst from the alleys—women clutching children, boys with quivers on their backs, elders staggering with buckets of water—all fleeing in the same direction.
"Chen!"
His mother rushed up the wall, seizing his hand. She shoved a pendant of azure stone into his palm. The pendant was cold, but her calloused hand burned. It was the weight of her life's labor, and now, the burden of something far heavier.
"Take it. Go north, past the dry river. Don't look back." Her voice trembled like autumn wind, yet held unshakable resolve. She reached to brush the hair from his brow—then a lance screamed through the night and pierced her before she could touch him.
"Mother—!"
Blood blossomed before his eyes. Her body was pinned against a splintered post, yet her gaze clung to him. Her lips moved as if to form the word "Go," but only a mouthful of blood spilled forth, scalding his cheek.
His father seized him, dragging him down from the wall. The man's broad frame was a shield against the storm of arrows. He thrust a spare axe into Luo Chen's hands, hefting his own weapon, breath harsh and thunderous.
"Remember—live! Take what she gave you, and live!"
Flames flickered in his father's eyes as he leapt down from the wall. The first rider charged, and his father's axe whirled through the firelight, biting through helm and neck. Blood sprayed like sparks into the night. But the second spear struck, then the third. His father staggered, pierced, yet still hewed down the enemy, holding the breach with his flesh. He was a log burning to ash, yet still blocking the flood.
"Father!" Luo Chen lurched forward, but the elder's hand clamped his shoulder, gnarled as roots yet immovable.
"Here." The elder bit his finger, sketching a blood rune on the ground before pressing his palm to Luo Chen's arm. Searing heat lanced under his skin, the mark burning like a serpent in his veins. Luo Chen shuddered, vision blazing white as the elder muttered: "Spirits, grant him the road unseen. Grant him the hidden flame. He is the fireseed."
For an instant the old man's eyes shone with the same warmth he once held when healing the sick, then hardened into a final, unbreakable calm. "Go."
He pushed Luo Chen toward the inner streets, then turned, leaning on his prayer-carved staff, and walked into the fire and steel.
The wall collapsed with a roar like a mountain breaking. Luo Chen saw the tribe overturned like a cauldron, rooftops, alleys, threshing ground, altar—every corner of his childhood devoured by fire. He staggered from the rubble, the pendant hammering his chest with every heartbeat, pain sharp enough to suffocate.
"Catch that boy!" The steppe raiders howled like wolves.
"Cleanse this land with heretic blood!" The knights' chants rang cold and merciless.
He crawled beneath burning beams, hair singed to curls, smoke choking his lungs. Grain spilled across the street, blackening in the flames. He slipped, arrows hissing past his ear.
Pressing against a mud wall, chest heaving, he clutched the pendant. It pulsed like a second heart. Then, faintly, in his bones—
—Walk, fireseed. Do not stop.
—North.
—Three steps right.
He obeyed before thought. Three steps right, a fallen rack, a stone shed, a narrow alley behind a pile of firewood. He squeezed through, scraping his skin raw, splinters stabbing his palms. Behind him boots thundered, voices closing in.
He burst from the passage, tumbling into a ditch outside the walls, rolling through mud and ash until his mouth filled with dirt.
Here was night—true night. Behind him the village still burned, before him the grassland stretched black and endless. The wind carried both the sweetness of grass and the stench of blood. Hooves still drummed in the distance, countless hearts pounding beneath the earth.
The mark on his arm glowed faint red, crawling like a serpent under his skin. The pendant pulsed in rhythm, as though the two spoke to each other. He didn't know what they were—only that they were driving him onward.
He ran north. The wind grew colder, the dark deeper. His legs faltered, lungs sliced with every breath. The grassland had never been so vast, nor so merciless. Then—shadows rose before him.
Wolves. Dozens of eyes like shards of green glass ignited in the dark. The pack spread in a crescent, silent, closing. Luo Chen's hands trembled as he raised his broken spear. His heart thundered like a drum.
The wolf king leapt. Luo Chen flung up the shaft—
The mark detonated.
A shockwave burst from his arm, pressing the air flat. The wolf king faltered mid-leap, landing with a limp. The pack whimpered, tails tucked, eyes fixed not on him but on the unseen force that burned in pendant and mark.
Slowly, they parted, opening a path. The wolf king cast him one long, unreadable glance before vanishing into the night, the pack flowing after.
Through the gap, the wind blew cool, carrying the breath of damp stone. Before him stretched the dry riverbed, its stones smooth with the memory of lost waters. He stumbled onto them, the clatter beneath his feet like whispers of ancient currents.
He followed the river north. Behind him the horizon bled red, fire spilling into the dawn. His chest burned as though that same fire lived within, searing every memory. He remembered small things: a net drying in the yard, bubbles rising in a pot of porridge, his father's wrist bound by a bleeding cord, a rake turning grain under autumn sun. Each tiny thing weighed on his back, heavier than any spear.
He touched the pendant, feeling the stone's faint ridges, the ember frozen inside. His voice cracked as he spoke into the morning wind:
"Mother… I carry it. Father… I survived."
At the river's end, thickets tore at his shoes. Beyond lay a hollow where a half-buried stone stele jutted from the earth, etched with patterns worn thin by time. As he drew near, the pendant clicked, a hidden lock undone. Light seeped from within, a faint ember glowing in the pre-dawn grey.
Runes across the stele flared awake, threads of light knitting into a dizzying sigil.
"Luminara…" The word leapt to his mind, half-remembered from the elder's lips, half a stranger.
Agony ripped through his arm. The mark burned, pain searing up to his heart. Luo Chen collapsed to his knees, choking. The pendant's glow flickered, his vision blurred—yet voices hammered into his skull, more primal than language.
—Sequence One, calibration.
—Fireseed, marked.
—Epoch… end.
Visions crashed through him: bridges strung across skies, suns caught in crystal dishes, an endless net spanning the earth, its knots trembling with a touch.
"Enough!" His teeth ground out the word. Terror rose sharp in his chest. He tore the pendant from the stele. The light snapped out, the voices silenced.
He fell back, gasping at the paling sky. Dawn bled through smoke—grey, then red, then cold white.
The stele was silent stone again. His mark dimmed, the pendant cooled in his palm. He slipped it back around his neck, thumb tracing the stone's edge.
Perhaps the elder's "spirits" were not spirits at all. Perhaps something older lay hidden under earth and wind, in stone and blood, waiting for fire to call its name.
Luo Chen rose, knees trembling. He turned back once. In the distance, the fire still raged, a mirror showing him not as the boy of last night but as something new—a fireseed standing between ruin and wilderness.
He pressed his palm to his chest, bowing clumsily toward the flames.
"I will live."
"I will carry you with me."
"I will bring this fire back to mankind."
Then he turned north. The dry river stretched ahead, dawn spilling pale light across his shoulders, drawing his shadow long behind him.
In the thicket, something glinted silver—a knight's insignia, or a pursuer's clasp? A gaze lingered on him, cold and distant. Hooves whispered faint in the wind.
But Luo Chen did not look back. He stepped into the mirrors of dew on the grass, each drop reflecting the sky. And in those countless mirrors walked a single figure—Luo Chen, bearing the ashes of his tribe, walking toward an unknown epoch.
The pendant at his chest quivered once, a brief, clear response.
—Live.