Kael's hands were scorched even before the forge was brought to life. Sparks jumped across the metal as if they had a will of their own, dancing in the dim workshop like impish spirits. He clenched his teeth, steadied himself, and swung his hammer again. The clang of steel against steel echoed through Rugert's small forge, a rhythm he had known all his life. Every strike was precise, yet something felt different that night. Yes, somehow the air itself seemed to hold its breath.
Rugert, bent over a dulling blade by the workbench, hummed a soft tune, oblivious to the change Kael seemed to sense. "Steady, Kael," he said, without turning around. "The iron won't yield if you rush. You need to take your time with it."
Kael wiped sweat from his brow, shaking his head. "It's not the iron tonight," he muttered under his breath. His chest felt tight, and he could almost swear the fire tonight felt alive. And it wasn't just his imagination. Right before his eyes, it happened.
The hammer moved of its own accord.
A pulse ran through Kael's arms, nor from the strike, or the heat of the forge, but somewhere within. Somewhere deeper. His fingers tingled as the metal of the hammer began to glow, not red from fire, or orange from coals, but a pure and searing yellow. He realized what it was almost immediately, for Flame was not born of wood or coal, but of something older. Something ancient.
The forge roared higher, feeding the heat that suddenly curled around Kael's wrists. For a second he felt it to be beautiful, but suddenly remembered what Flame really was. He stumbled back, heart pounding, and nearly dropped his hammer. The air thickened, and then he felt it: a heartbeat not his own, synchronized with his own pulse, aware and waiting.
A voice, though not a voice, whispered in the fire. Not words, or language, but a promise. Power. Destruction. Choice.
Kael swallowed, trying to steady his shaky hands. He had always been gifted, quick with a hammer, clever with metal, able to make more from less than anyone else in the Dominion. But this... This was something else. Something he knew he wasn't ready for.
The hammer fell from his hands. His chest heaved as he backed desperately towards the door, eyes wide in terror. The fire answered him, even then. The Flame knew his name.
That was when he realized it. This wouldn't go unnoticed. Somewhere, beyond the walls of the city, perhaps even high above in the towers of the Ashen Dominion, or the sanctums of fanatics who worshipped Flame, eyes would turn toward him.
His thoughts raced. The Ashen Dominion had been hunting Emberborn for centuries. The Order of White Flame, the fanatical matriarchal sect, would likely want to sink their claws into him as well. The legends Rugert had whispered to him, stories he had laughed off as a child, were suddenly no longer fairy tales. He was now part of something neither of them had ever expected.
Rugert slammed a huge hand on Kael's shoulder, shaking him out of his stupor. "Boy, what in the-" The blacksmith's eyes went wide, mouth opening as he took in the sight of the hammer, glowing with unnatural heat, and the tiny firestorm circling in the forge. "By the Gods, what have you done?"
Kael's voice was hoarse. "I didn't... I didn't do anything! The fire... On its own... It knows me."
Rugert paled. He had seen Emberborn before in his youth, when the world was still recovering from the Great Burnout, and knew that what would follow was not a peaceful life for anyone touched by Flame.
The implications raced through Rugert's mind, and he made a quick decision. "Kael," Rugert said, voice trembling, "you need to hide this. You need to leave, now. Before anyone sees.
Kael nodded, seemingly accepting his ominous fate. He had always wanted to own the greatest forge in the Dominion, but it seemed the world had different plans for him. And those plans weren't waiting.
As Kael walked to his room upstairs, his mind raced at the thought of the life so suddenly thrust upon him, and the one taken away. See, Kael was orphaned at a young age, and Rugert, a blacksmith and close friend of his parents, had been his guardian ever since then. They both lived and were citizens of the city of Pyraxis, generally considered as the capital of the great Ashen Dominion.
The Ashen Dominion was the centralized imperial power in charge of governing most of the city-states that remained as part of the world. A long time ago, it would've been impossible for one power to own that magnitude of control, but the world had changed a lot the past few millenia. The cause for the existence of the Ashen Dominion could directly be attributed to a past event in history called the Great Burnout.
See, the world had been progressing well in the olden days, but as the average temperature of the planet rose, and it's inhabitants burned fossil fuels at increasing rates, the atmosphere began to change, and the planet's core along with it. Then, for a reason lost to history, the first Burnout happened. An unprecedented event where the lives of millions were lost, cities were demolished, and land was left a barren and uninhabitable wasteland.
The survivors of the event could only describe it as an unnatural heatwave, but after the event, something stranger happened. The Emberborn began to awaken to their abilities. These were random people who suddenly gained the ability to manipulate fire and heat in various ways. The world tried its best to accommodate the new changes going on, but after roughly a thousand years, another Burnout occured, with a far greater magnitude.
Governments were in chaos. People were hysterical. The world seemed to be ending right before everyone's eyes. And that wasn't the worst part. Every single Emberborn that survived the Burnout became something else right after it happened. They either lost their abilities, or became very unstable when it came to using them. Many were grotesquely altered physically, and experienced memory loss or emotional instability. This did nothing to help the already crumbling civilisation.
Burnouts became an unavoidable millennial apocalypse, and the Emberborn who were damaged after every event were dubbed Cinders by the general population. Every Burnout managed to severely cripple the progress of civilization and the world's technological progres, and certain locations were so damaged that they became uninhabitable and impossible to revisit due to the residual heat and chaotic atmospheric conditions there.
Eventually, a Burnout so disastrous occured, that the world was forced to begin again. Records ended. Borders vanished. History vanished into myth. In the aftermath, the Ashen Dominion rose to suppress the assumed cause; Emberborn, and the Flame they wielded. The Order of White Flame, a fanatical religious organization that worshipped Flame and revered the Emberborn as custodians of that force, rose in opposition of the Dominion. The Emberborn, being the focal point of this struggle, became both feared and hunted. They became living reminders of a power that had nearly ended everything, and that particular event came to be called the Great Burnout.
After packing a bag hastily, he quickly rushed outside, discovering the streets of Pyraxis to already be quiet. Smoke curled from chimneys, and somewhere in the distance, the hum of the city suggested normalcy. He sighed, looking at his hands. Normalcy was something he was going to have to leave behind, he thought to himself. Flame did not wait for the normal. It didn't care for status, politics, or ambition. It demanded recognition from all.
As Kael rushed through the streets, barely knowing where to go to hide from the Dominion's Inquisitors, he stopped to catch his breath in a run down alley. As he thought about his future and new unfamiliar ability, he caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. A hooded figure ran past the alley, but returned to the entrance, almost as if they had confirmed what they sought was in there.
Kael's pulse spiked. Had they seen the fire? We're they an Inquisitor? Granted, the lapdogs of the Ashen Dominion, tasked with locating all Emberborn and taking them in, seemed to be everywhere, at every time. Still, wouldn't that be too quick? He didn't even get to figure anything out yet.
His instinct told him to run. But before he could react, a second pulse of Flame rippled through his chest. The fire spread into his hand from his heart, and a wave of heat burst from his body into the walls of the alley, pushing the stranger back a few steps, and shattering a window by the side. Kael instinctively raised his arm, and the Flame obeyed excitedly. It coiled around his fingers, and gathered into the classic ball of fire above his palm.
"Stay back!" He said to the stranger. He was scared, but also excited by his seeming fast mastery of control. "I don't plan on hurting anyone, but my plans were trashed pretty easily tonight, so that could change as well."
The stranger silently watched him, and then slowly raised their hand to the hood covering their face. They slowly pulled back their hood, revealing long hair as unburned ash, cascading down against their shoulders in stark contrast to their dark skin. For a heartbeat, Kael forgot the fire, forgot the pursuit, forgot the world beyond the alley; until he met her eyes and realized she was far more dangerous than the Flame he carried.
Her gaze held him in place.
Not because it burned, or glowed, or threatened, but because it measured. As if Kael were not a frightened boy cornered in an alley, but a piece of metal laid bare on an anvil, waiting to be judged for flaws he did not yet know he had. The silence between them stretched, thick and heavy, broken only by the distant hiss of night wind slipping through broken stone and the faint crackle of embers still clinging to Kael's skin.
The fire within him stirred.
Not violently. Not yet.
It recoiled, wary, like a beast recognizing a rival rather than prey.
She lowered her hand from her hood but did not relax. Every part of her remained deliberate, restrained, as though stillness itself were a discipline she had mastered. The white of her hair seemed to drink in the low light, each strand catching faint glimmers from the lingering sparks around Kael's fingers. He realized then that she was older than she looked; not in years, but in weight. The kind of weight carried by those who had stood too close to catastrophe and chosen not to blink.
"You felt it tonight," she said at last.
Her voice was calm, unhurried, and it slid through the alley like smoke. It was soft, but impossible to ignore. It was not a question.
Kael swallowed. His throat felt dry, scorched from the inside out. "I don't know what it is," he said, though even as the words left him, he knew they were a lie. He had felt it. Felt the way the fire had answered him, the way it had listened. "I didn't mean for anything to happen."
A faint, almost imperceptible curve touched her lips. Not amusement. Something closer to recognition.
"No one ever does," she replied.
She took a single step forward. The space between them tightened, the air itself seeming to bend around her presence. Kael felt it immediately; the subtle shift, the way the Flame inside him leaned inward, drawing closer to his core as if bracing itself. His fingers twitched, embers flaring briefly before he forced them down, clenching his fists until his knuckles ached.
The woman's eyes flicked to his hands.
"Careful," she said quietly. "You're not being hunted yet. Don't announce yourself."
"Hunted?" Kael echoed.
She studied him for a long moment, her gaze tracing the tension in his shoulders, the soot on his clothes, the barely contained tremor running through him. When she spoke again, her voice carried something heavier beneath its calm; a certainty learned long ago.
"The Dominion hunts what it cannot control. The Order watches what it cannot afford to lose. And the Flame…" Her eyes lifted, briefly, to the dark strip of sky above the alley. "The Flame simply waits."
A chill crept up Kael's spine.
He had grown up with stories; half-whispered warnings, half-forgotten legends, but standing here, with ash still clinging to his breath and this woman's presence pressing down on him, those stories felt dangerously small. This was not a tale told by a fire at night. This was something unfolding, something that had already begun to move whether he understood it or not.
"I just want to go home," he said, the words escaping before he could stop them.
Something in her expression shifted then. Not sympathy. Not softness. But a brief, sharp awareness; as if she understood precisely what that wish would cost him.
"There is no home untouched by the Flame," she said. "Only places it hasn't reached yet."
She turned slightly, angling her body toward the deeper shadows of the alley, where the city's noise faded into a low, distant hum. Kael followed the movement without realizing he had done so, his feet already adjusting, his instincts bending toward her direction like heated metal toward a hammer.
"If you stay," she continued, "you will burn alone. If you follow me, you will learn why."
She met his eyes again, and this time there was no mistaking it. It was not danger, not threat, but inevitability.
"My name is Seris," she said. "And you are standing at the beginning of a cycle that will not wait for your fear."
The Flame pulsed once, deep and unmistakable.
And Kael knew, whether he stepped forward or not, that the world had already taken note of him.