Alex's first act as a freshly-minted Beast-Tamer was to sprint full-tilt into a frozen cabbage field while a sentient fire-cub rode shotgun on his collar and an invisible stopwatch laughed at his life choices.
The system had given him twenty-four hours to "secure safe lodging or face termination of Host-Sparking synchrony." Which sounded a lot fancier than pay rent or your cat explodes, but Alex had learned to translate Ember's threats into street-Greenglen real fast. He also had a mystery egg tucked under his coat like a smuggled melon, and the bracer kept pinging hotter every time he thought about the rent-man's knuckles.
Spark's tail lashed orange ribbons across the dusk. Wherever the fire brushed, frost hissed into steam, leaving char-black footprints that spelled doom for the village's already pathetic cabbage yield. Alex tried to shush him. The cub responded by sneezing a golf-ball-sized ember that cratered a head of produce and revealed—thank the saints—soil that wasn't on fire.
"Small mercies," Alex wheezed, vaulting the low stone wall that separated farmland from Mill Lane. His thighs were jelly. The ridge collapse felt hours ago; his lungs said centuries. He needed food, copper, and a plausible story that didn't involve ancient ruins, magical heartbeats, or flaming weasels. Greenglen loved gossip the way stray dogs loved carrion; if he walked the main street smelling like brimstone, someone would tie him to a witch-post before bedtime.
The bracer pulsed: a steady amber heartbeat against his wrist. Each thump printed a translucent timer in the corner of his vision.
> [Lodging Quest: 23:37:12 remaining]
"Working on it," he muttered. Spark tilted his head, ears swivelling like tiny radar dishes. Then the cub's hackles flared. A low growl crackled in his throat—more bonfire than animal.
Alex followed the stare. Down Mill Lane, silhouetted against lamplight, stood the hunched shape of Rent-Man Dregs. Dregs had fists like cured hams and a philosophy that regarded late payments as personal insults requiring blood rebates. He was pounding the door of Alex's attic loft—one room, leaky shingles, communal chimney, two silvers a month. Technically it wasn't Alex's anymore; technically it never had been, since he'd paid exactly once.
The door shuddered. Dregs's voice carried. "—know the rat's in there! Open or I break the hinge!"
Alex's stomach folded in on itself. He backed into an alley, pressing between crates of winter apples. Think. He had no coin, no food, and a creature that could barbecue a cow if startled. Option one: run—take the egg and Spark and vanish into the wild. Option two: sell the egg—black-market dealers paid mad money for unregistered monsters. Option three: hide long enough to hustle copper, then pay.
> [System Advisory: Option 2 statistically results in 87 % Host mortality within six hours.]
Alex swallowed. "Option 3 it is."
II
The easiest cash in Greenglen flowed from the rivermen at the Steam Barge, but the barges had closed for frost season. Second easiest came from Madame Orla's Nightshade Inn, where card tables coughed up copper faster than consumptive lungs. Alex's reflection—sooty hair, sootier coat—stared back from a rain barrel and laughed at his chances of walking through Orla's door without the bouncers tossing him into the snow.
He needed collateral. He had a flaming cat and a rock that occasionally vibrated.
Spark hopped onto the barrel rim, tail curling. The steam from his fur formed a lazy word in the air: TRADE?
Alex blinked. "You write?"
Spark scratched the barrel top; the wood blackened into crude pictures: a tankard, a coin, a smiling face. Then he pointed his snout at the Nightshade's chimney. Flames danced in his eyes like he was pricing kindling.
"Absolutely not," Alex hissed. "Arson gets us hanged."
Spark yawned, showing needle-thin teeth. A second ember drifted from his tongue, landing on the barrel's ice skin. Instead of melting, the ice silvered—became a mirror reflecting not the alley but the inside of the Nightshade's common room: warm, crowded, purses fat.
Alex's jaw unhooked. "You can spy through fire?"
Proud tail flick. The image sharpened on a table of half-drunk traders playing Snapdragon. Gold coins lay in heaps; every time a player snatched a raisin from the flaming bowl, the pile grew. Collateral, meet opportunity.
> [Side-Quest Generated: Win 5 Silver without dying or setting the inn ablaze. Reward: Skill – Ember Sight. Failure: Public execution.]
Alex exhaled fog. "You're a bad influence."
Spark's purr crackled like pine knots.
III
They slipped in through the delivery hatch. Heat slapped Alex's cheeks—woodsmoke, sweat, spilled ale. A bard plucked a lute missing two strings; the resulting noise could've curdled milk. No one noticed the soot-smudged boy until he sidled up to the Snapdragon table and emptied his pockets of nothing.
"Room for one more?" he asked.
The traders—three river-scarred brothers and a woman with a tattoo of a kraken—eyed him like fresh mutton. "Buy-in's a silver, gutter-rat," said the kraken woman.
Alex's stomach growled loud enough to rival the bard. He produced Spark, setting the cub on the table. Gasps rippled. Snapdragon's flame was tame, contained; Spark's fur pulsed like a forge heart.
"I stake my familiar," Alex declared, voice steadier than his knees. "One round. If I lose, he's yours. If I win, I take five silver and walk."
The brothers exchanged grins. "Deal," the eldest said, already picturing a fire-cub sideshow.
Spark sent a thread of flame across the tabletop, spelling in cursive ash: PLAY.
Minutes later, Alex's fingers were blistered, his eyebrows singed, and the kraken woman was screaming because Spark had levitated every raisin from the bowl mid-flame, raining them into Alex's hat. The traders forked over five silver with the enthusiasm of men paying a funeral tax.
Alex bowed, scooped Spark, and bolted before anyone remembered town ordinances on unlicensed magic.
IV
He paid Dregs at dawn. The brute stared at the coins like they'd personally offended him, then at the scorch marks on Alex's sleeves. "You steal this?"
"Earned it," Alex said, chin high.
Dregs pocketed the silver. "Rent's three now. Late fee."
Alex bit back a curse. The bracer pinged:
> [Lodging Quest: Complete. Reward: Ember Sight unlocked.]
A warm flood filled his eyes; the world layered into heat maps. He saw Dregs's pulse—red spikes at knuckles and temples—saw heat leaking from tavern chimneys two streets away. Most importantly he saw, under the rent-man's coat, a bulge of cold iron: shackles, the kind used on runaway debt-kids.
Spark growled softly. Alex forced a smile. "See you next month."
He climbed the stairs to his attic, locked the door, and collapsed onto straw mattress. Spark curled on his chest, egg nestled between them. For five whole minutes, life smelled almost okay—smoke, sweat, victory.
Then the shutters banged open.
A shape filled the window: raven-sized, but feathers glinted like obsidian knives. One eye, molten gold. The same color as Spark's. It dropped a black feather onto the floorboards, then spoke in his mother's voice.
"Run, Alex. They're coming for the egg."
The bird burst into flame, leaving only ash and the echo of wings.
V
Alex stared at the feather. It smoked against the frost-rimed boards, etching a perfect circle. Inside the circle, symbols crawled—circles within circles, beasts devouring tails. Obelisk graffiti. Ruin-script.
His blood turned to ice water. Spark's fur fluffed twice normal size; the cub backed away, hissing. Even the egg shivered—hairline cracks webbing its shell, leaking pulses of silver light that matched the bracer's new heartbeat.
> [Emergency Quest: Evacuate Greenglen within thirty minutes. Penalty: Host death.]
"Who's coming?" Alex whispered, though he already knew. People who used obelisks. People who'd built the ruin. People who'd probably noticed a chamber imploding last night.
He stuffed clothes into a potato sack, wrapped the egg in his only blanket, and slung Spark onto his shoulder. Downstairs, Dregs was banging on doors again, collecting protection coin. Alex slipped out the window, scaling iced shingles to the chimney stack. From the roof he saw the square filling with cloaked riders—six, maybe seven—each leading hound-shaped things that steamed despite the cold. Their armor drank dawn light, color of dried blood.
One rider looked up. Goggles mirrored Alex's face like twin moons. The hounds bayed, voices metallic, wrong. Spark's tail ignited; smoke curled skyward, a beacon.
Alex ran.
Behind him, shutters shattered. Riders shouted. Hooves clattered on cobblestone. He leapt gaps between roofs, boots skidding on frost-slick thatch. The bracer blazed, timer ticking:
> [29:12…29:11…]
At the ridge trail, he risked a glance back. Greenglen's bells tolled—not for prayer, but alarm. Smoke rose from his attic window. Not Spark's orange flame; something colder, greener, eating wood without burning it. Obelisk fire.
A rider emerged from the smoke holding the black feather. Even at a hundred yards, Alex heard the voice—same genderless cadence as the system, but twisted, echoing like speech through a long hall.
"Host deviation detected. Reclamation protocol engaged."
Spark snarled. The egg cracked wider; silver light spilled between Alex's fingers, warm as blood, bright as promise.
He turned his back on the village, on debt, on every safe plan he'd never really had, and ran into the white teeth of the mountains.
Somewhere above, the raven-shaped fire watched, one-eyed, patient.
And in the bracer's display, a new icon flickered—half-formed, pulsing.
> [System Update 1.1: Bloodline Lock – Released?]
The word Released blinked, then shattered into static.
Behind the static, faint but growing, came a second heartbeat.
Not Spark's. Not the egg's.
His mother's.