They didn't speak on the walk back.
Elira's boots crunched through the snow crust, and each step echoed in her mind like a heartbeat. Her palm still burned, not with pain, but with something stranger, something alive. The warmth was centered just below her skin, as though the ember left behind by the fox had lodged itself in her bones.
Tavren walked behind her, every other step a half-stumble. She could hear the way he kept glancing around. He hadn't stopped doing that since they left the clearing. Not once.
"Elira…" he whispered. "What if someone saw it too?"
"No one was out that far," she murmured. "No one ever is."
Except you, said a voice in her head. But she ignored it.
The forest slowly thinned, trees giving way to the wide, half-dead fields that surrounded Thornvale. The old walls circled the village like a crooked spine, made from riverstone and timber patched with moss, with wards carved deep into the gateposts. The outer farmlands were fallow, half-choked with rot, the soil strange and sour, despite the season turning. Some said it was the cold that lingered too long. Others whispered the land had been touched.
Thornvale was a village of heavy silences and long memories. Once, it had been a place of light, trade, and song. That's what the oldest elders claimed. But Elira had only known it as a place of waiting, where even the seasons moved as if afraid.
As they passed the outer cottages, shutters closed quietly. Elira caught movement from behind drawn curtains. A flash of cloth. A flicker of eyes.
"They're watching us," Tavren muttered. "Again."
"Let them."
"You touched it, Elira. The fire. They'll smell it on you."
She didn't answer. She couldn't.
When they reached the cottage, three rooms of stone, wood, and soot-darkened windows. The air inside was warm, but close. Their mother was standing at the hearth, stirring something in the iron pot that hung over the fire. She didn't look up when they came in.
"You're late," she said.
"We went north," Elira said, trying to keep her voice level. "Past the dry creek."
The spoon paused in the pot.
"You went past the warding stones."
Tavren flinched. Elira stepped forward.
"There was something there," she said. "It found us."
Now their mother turned. Her face was drawn, the lines at her mouth deeper than usual. A tiredness hung about her that Elira had never really noticed before, like something always weighing down her shoulders.
"What did you see?" she asked, very quietly.
"A fox," Elira said. "But not a normal one. It glowed. It spoke."
"It said the world is bleeding," Tavren added quickly. "And Elira has something called the ember."
The spoon dropped from their mother's hand and hit the stone floor with a sharp clang.
She crossed the room in two strides and slammed the shutters closed, then turned to the fire and stoked it high before speaking again.
"Not here," she said. "Not loud. Not with ears listening."
"Ears?" Tavren asked. "Like whose?"
"The ones who've been waiting for this," she said. "The ones who remember."
Elira's throat was dry. "You know what it was. You know what's happening to me."
Their mother's jaw clenched. Then, as if the weight of hiding had become too much, she sat down slowly by the fire and motioned for them to join her.
"There are things I hoped you'd never need to know," she said. "Stories I buried when I became a mother. When I chose safety over truth."
Elira sat beside her, the warmth of the fire suddenly too sharp.
"It wasn't just a fox," their mother said. "It was a Kyren. One of the Flamebound."
"Spirits?" Tavren asked. "Like in the old stories?"
"They're more than stories." She looked at Elira. "Once, a long time ago, the fox spirits walked openly among us. When corruption first touched the earth when the kings fell and the Vale fractured, the Flamebound came to guide the oathbearers. Those chosen by the fire."
"And the oath?" Elira asked, heart hammering. "What was it?"
"The Foxfire Oath," her mother said, voice barely above a whisper. "A covenant sworn by flame, passed through blood. The ones who held it were guardians not just of land or people, but of balance. When one side rose too high, greed, power, shadow, the fire called someone to restore the scales."
Elira's hands clenched in her lap. "And now it's calling again."
"Yes," her mother said. "To you."
Silence.
Then Tavren whispered, "Why her?"
"Because she is her great-grandmother's blood," her mother said. "Because the fire never forgets."
"You knew," Elira said. "You knew something like this could happen."
"I hoped it wouldn't. I prayed every night that it had ended. That the spirits had moved on."
"They haven't."
Their mother nodded once. "Then the world is in more danger than it knows."
Elira looked into the hearth and saw not fire, but the fox's eyes. Watching. Waiting. Judging.
"I need to find it again," she said. "The Kyren."
Her mother placed a hand on her arm. "If you go looking for it, you must be ready to carry what comes with it. The flame is not a gift, Elira. It's a burden. A trial."
"I don't care," Elira said. "I need to know the truth. All of it."
"Then there's someone you must speak to," her mother said, after a long pause. "An old friend. She lives beyond the northern pass, near the ruins of Halden's Reach. She was a Keeper, once. A memory-warden."
"I thought those were gone," Elira said.
"They are," her mother said. "Except one."
Tavren's voice trembled. "What if the Wardens find out first?"
"Then you'll have to run faster than they do," their mother said simply. "And pray that the fox finds you again before they do."
Later that night, while the village slept, Elira packed a small satchel beneath moonlight. She did not know exactly where she was going. But she knew one thing for certain.
The ember in her blood was not fading.
It was growing.