---
At dawn, the crater looked less like a battlefield and more like a grave.
The glass had melted into obsidian. The sand had hardened into runes only Kael could half-understand. And from the blackened center where the flame-being had vanished, something pulsed beneath the earth—faint, rhythmic, like a second heartbeat.
Kael sat at the edge, staring into the scorched basin.
His right hand still glowed faintly, like an ember that refused to die. He tried to suppress it, to will the light away, but the fire inside him only dimmed—and never disappeared.
> "You're not afraid of it anymore," Eira said, crouching beside him.
Kael looked down at his hand, then at her.
> "I'm afraid of what it wants from me."
---
They broke camp in silence.
Arion moved with a limp from the ambush two nights prior. Vireya was quiet for once, her sharp eyes duller than usual. The encounter had shaken them all.
But the silence didn't last.
Before noon, they heard the whispers.
Voices carried on the wind.
Not close. Not hostile.
Just... curious.
Then came the first sign: footprints—small, barefoot, and too many to count. They circled the camp in a wide arc, never coming closer than a hundred meters, but always visible.
Kael spotted a strange sigil scrawled in ash on a nearby rock. A triangle wrapped in a ring of thorns, and inside it—
His own name, carved into the stone in perfect detail.
Kael froze.
> "They were here before we arrived," he murmured.
> "Who?" Arion asked.
> "People who already know who I am."
---
As the sun began to sink, they emerged.
No warning. No war cry. Just movement.
Dozens of them—children, but wrong.
Eyes too old.
Skin dusted with soot.
Clothes patched from military rags, stitched with threads of bone and wire.
Some carried spears made of broken rifle parts. Others wore helmets too large for their heads, with red-glowing symbols burned across the metal.
They formed a half-circle around Kael and the others.
Then, one stepped forward.
A boy—barely ten. Missing two fingers. Eyes silver and unblinking.
He bowed—not to the group.
To Kael.
> "Flamefather," he said, voice clear and too calm for his age. "You came. Just like the cinders promised."
---
Kael didn't respond immediately. He looked around—at the children's unmoving faces, the sigils painted across their chests in ash and blood.
> "We're not gods," he said slowly. "We're just survivors."
The boy blinked. "That's what all the old ones said, before they forgot what they were made for."
> "Who told you about me?"
Another child stepped forward—this one a girl, older, maybe twelve, with one milky eye and an ancient blade strapped to her back.
> "We dreamed you," she said. "All of us. The same dream. Fire falling from the sky. A man with glass in his eyes. Cities screaming. And then you—standing in the middle of it all."
Kael felt Eira's hand tighten around his wrist.
> "We thought the Flame was just a tale," the boy continued. "Until the sky cracked."
---
Vireya stepped forward, hand on her weapon.
> "They could be cultists. They could be bait."
> "They're children," Kael said flatly.
> "So was I when I killed my first squadmate," Vireya snapped. "Desperation doesn't care about age."
Kael looked at the group again. None of them blinked. None of them ran. They just waited.
And then one knelt.
Then another.
Then another—until all of them were on their knees, heads bowed.
> "We followed the fire," the boy said. "It led us here. To you."
Kael looked at his hand again—still faintly glowing.
He sighed.
> "Then I guess we better find out what it wants."
---
The children led them deep into the wasteland, into a hollowed military base half-swallowed by sand and silence. Inside were murals—charcoal and blood, drawn with care:
Scenes of Kael with wings of fire.
Eira glowing with light.
Cities crumbling under black skies.
And always—the same symbol: the triangle of thorns.
> "You made these?" Eira whispered.
> "No," said the girl. "They were already here. Before us."
Kael's chest felt tight.
He touched one of the walls. It pulsed under his fingers.
Alive.
Calling to him.
---
As night fell, the children sang.
Not loud.
Not joyful.
Just a single, low harmony, echoing off metal and ash.
Kael lay awake while the others rested, the weight of their trust sinking in.
Then he heard it.
Footsteps behind him—slow. Heavy.
He turned—and saw one of the oldest children, a teenager with a shattered gas mask hanging from his neck.
> "You shouldn't trust all of us," the boy said quietly.
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Why?"
> "Because not all of us follow you. Some of us… were waiting for her."
Kael froze. "Who?"
The boy smiled, slow and cruel.
> "The other Flame. The one they buried beneath this place."
And beneath them, the floor cracked.