32. Chapter 32
R en stood in the snow. She knew immediately where she was.
Home .
The faint, acrid scent of coal drifted in the air, smoke carried from the mines that had long been Ironforge’s lifeblood.
Their small home sat just across the field from where she stood; she could see candlelight through the slats in the wood and hear her father’s deep voice from within.
It was shabbier than she remembered, the timber walls weathered and thin, patched in places where the wind slipped through, no matter how her mother tried to stuff the cracks.
When the figures in crimson cloaks came calling, they had to bend their heads to step through the door.
From inside, her mother screamed.
Ren flinched from the sound that had invaded her nightmares for years since this night. She wanted to run to them, to scream, to change things, but she was a spectator trapped in her own memory.
It took every shred of will to force her feet forward, to cross the threshold and step into the night that had broken her.
Immediately, her gaze fell on her younger self writhing against the ropes, small wrists rubbed raw.
Looking at the girl she once was, Ren was struck by how frail she’d been – bony arms, hollowed cheeks, a face carved thin by hunger and years of going without.
Her mother’s final gasp rattled the cabin walls as she drowned in her own blood.
Even now, Ren couldn’t bring herself to watch her mother’s life pass, but her younger self couldn’t look away.
Movement caught Ren’s gaze. Eve stood near the kitchen, her fingers drifting across an object on the counter. Ren’s old crimson scarf. Eve touched it softly, as if it were some precious relic instead of a child’s worn scrap of cloth.
Ren’s pulse thundered in her ears.
The creature’s voice slithered through the scene, low and gloating.
“Ah… there it is. Look at her. Not a tear for your mother. Not even a glance at your father’s blood.
No, but see how she attends to your scarf as though it were the only thing worth her touch?
Precious Eve… worshipping scraps while your family bled. ”
Ren’s nails bit into her palms until she felt the sting of her own skin breaking. Her attention snapped back to her younger self again. She could barely stand to look. That child’s face was blotched with tears, her cries raw, too young and so innocent.
So helpless .
One of the figures opened a flask and began splashing oil across the walls, the table, the very floorboards soaked with her family’s blood. The figure upended the flask over their father’s slumped body. Oil dripped down her father’s hair, his beard, pooling beneath him.
A ragged cough tore from her father’s chest, startling in its frailty. His head jerked, eyes glazed. “Please… just end it,” he begged. “Don’t leave me to burn. End me now.”
The plea hung heavy in the cabin. Even the figures paused, the oil dripping from the flask punctuating the silence like falling tears.
“This house will be cleansed and burned,” a male intoned from behind his mask. “And you will burn with it.”
Her father surged forward. “No-no, please. Take her instead,” he begged, stumbling as he tried to reach them.
“Take her life. She’ll do whatever you want – serve, obey, just spare me.
” He pointed a shaking hand at Ren’s younger self.
“She’s nothing – she’s no one. Do anything you wish.
” His breathing hitched. “Just… let me live.”
Ren’s younger self didn’t even look at him.
Her eyes were locked instead on the dark, spreading pool beneath her mother, on the way it crept across the floorboards toward her bare feet.
She stared at it as if the world had narrowed to nothing but that red stain, as if the screams and bargaining around her were happening behind a closed door.
But Ren looked at her father now and realized for the first time what her life had been worth to him. Ren snorted and said aloud to nobody in particular, “What a man. Nothing says paternal love like selling your kid to save your own shitty life.”
One of the figures towards the back shifted their weight and grumbled, “Saints, let’s just end it already.”
Ren’s younger self screamed as the fire unleashed.
It was as if she heeded his words before anyone else.
And Ren saw wings unfurling from her younger self’s back, vast and terrible, each feather a living flame.
They arched wide, blue and searing, painting the cabin walls with light that swallowed everything in its touch.
Flames erupted from her hands, from her chest – it surged toward the figures like a storm given form. One blink and they were gone.
Through the flames inside the house, a figure stepped out.
Her sister.
Untouched.
Eve’s dark hair was unbound, her eyes wild.
Her gaze swept over Ren’s collapsed younger self, and the fire curled around her as if obeying an unspoken command.
Two other figures stepped in through the front door and swept Ren’s younger self into a bag.
The tallest figure tossed the bag over their shoulder like a weighty flour sack.
“It is done,” Eve murmured.
Then she turned and walked, soundless as a wraith, toward where Ren watched. Steps away, Eve came to a stop. Then her eyes met Ren’s directly.
Ren’s breath stopped in her throat.
“You are the flame that remembers.”
As many times before, Ren felt a thum that was not just hers. Her hands shook.
Eve turned and left into the darkness.
The vision splintered away.
Ren stumbled backward, falling to her knees in the shrine’s center. She clutched the hilt of Ashrend tighter, her knuckles white .
All this time, she thought her power had devoured her life. But it had been protecting her.
And the hunger in Ren’s magic? The way it curled like a beast behind her ribs? It wasn’t madness. It was a legacy .
She rose to her feet with trembling legs. Not whole. But no longer fractured.
A daughter of fire.
The bog recognized it, too because the shadows pulled back, as if bowing before something ancient that had finally woken. Ren closed her eyes. She did not try to silence the power inside her. She listened.
And in the silence, the fire purred.