Kaelen rode with Amara through dawn-faded sands, past broken trade routes, and into the southern fringe — where old temples turned to bone piles and the land remembered violence better than peace.Saltana slept fitfully in the makeshift cart behind them, bandaged but still burning with fever. They had little time. Sahen’s reach was spreading faster than they could run.“We’ll find one of the names here,” Amara said. “A village keeper. She was Flameborn once, before she vanished.”Kaelen nodded, looking around the horizon. “And if Sahen found her first?”Amara didn’t answer.They crested a dune — and stopped.The village was gone.Smoldering roofs. Walls torn down by something not natural. A body nailed to a wall. Smoke curled upward in lazy ribbons as if the flame hadn’t just destroyed the town but haunted it.Kaelen dismounted and moved through the ruin.Twenty… thirty dead. Children. Elders. No soldiers.Lives— erased… just like that.At the edge of the square, he found her.A girl.

There—beside the crooked skeleton of stone and silence—was a horse that had been sloppily tethered. Dried sweat crusted along its flanks, with its ribs rising and falling like it had run too far, for too long. Behind it, at the base of the broken tower, two shapes curled in the dust.Kaelen pulled the reins hard, slowing to a slower speed.His heart, once pacing in the rhythm of hooves, faltered.“Zaria?” he breathed. The name didn’t even sound real.He dismounted fast, crunching his boots against gravel and grit, and ran the last few steps.She was there.Collapsed like a bird with clipped wings, hair matted, skin too pale against the heat-baked sand. Her dress—once white—was torn, soaked in blood at the side and down the thigh. The fabric looked stiff from dried salt, and her lips were cracked like shattered clay.She wasn’t breathing. Then—A shallow rise in her chest. Then another. Barely there.“Zaria,” Kaelen choked, dropping to his knees beside her. “Zaria…”Her skin was too

Amara said it like a promise: “We’re about to go fast.” With a just and pure grit laced with fire.She yanked the reins, and the horse beneath them groaned before bursting forward with everything it had left. Hooves hit the ground like war drums—fast, uneven, full of rage and desperation.But it wasn’t enough.Saltana clutched the little girl tight against her chest, bouncing wildly in the back of the rattling cart like someone being punished for something she didn’t remember doing.“This horse is weak,” she gasped. “This cart is slow—oh no, oh no—they’re going to catch us!”The child stirred, groaning in her sleep.Saltana kept rambling with wide eyes that looked like two cracked plates. “I’ve never kissed a guy I actually liked! I’ve never done couples stuff! I’ve never even fallen in love! I was saving all of that for a big romantic moment that was supposed to come later on, and now I’m going to die in a dusty meat wagon!”Her voice pitched up as the cart bumped hard and the little

“Come with me, lad.”Without waiting for a reply, the old man moved. He stood—somehow taller than he looked when seated—and glided across the sand-slicked stone with the effortless grace of someone who hadn’t had a full meal in a decade yet moved like his soul owed time a favor.Kaelen blinked. Then blinked again.He struggled to his feet with a rattling breath in his chest. “Uh… I’m Kaelen, by the way. Do you have a name, Mr. Cryptic Desert Monk, or do I just keep calling you sir, wise one, or that surprisingly athletic old man?”No answer.Kaelen groaned, grabbing his side. “And how are you this fast?! Are you even real? Do hermits do workouts?”Still no reply. Just sandals brushing sand across sandstone as the old man moved deeper into the dim-lit corridor.Kaelen staggered after him.After a few pained steps, the old man finally spoke without turning:“Tell me, lad. What do you understand… when you hear the word Flameborn?”Kaelen inhaled slowly, trying to straighten up. “Uh… flam

The fire crackled softly in the sand. Its glow was low—not exactly a dying glow, but a tired one. Like it too had been running for far too long.Zaria slowly crawled forward, each movement was deliberate and with the weight of exhaustion that made her limbs feel like soaked linen. She reached the wooden wheel of the cart, sank beside it, and let her back rest against it with a heavy exhale.Amara was already there.Curled at the other end with her legs slightly pulled up, and her head tilted back against the wooden tire. Her arms were folded across her stomach, and the firelight was flickering across her face.Without a word, she scooted sideways—shoulder brushing shoulder—and let Zaria's head gently fall against hers.It was silent for a long moment.The kind of silence that didn’t ache. “Hey,” Amara quietly broke the silence turning up the corner of her mouth, though her voice was weighted and calm. “You doing okay, buddy? Are you recovered enough to walk properly now?”Zaria didn’t