Fire, Reborn
The wolves came at dusk on the tenth day.
They had made camp in a small clearing off the Trader’s Way, a spot that looked well-used by other travelers. A ring of stones marked where countless fires had burned before, the grass worn flat in places where tents had been pitched. It felt safe. Ordinary. Just another night on the road.
Noctis knew first.
He had been dozing by the fire, his head resting on his paws, when suddenly he was on his feet. A low growl rumbled in his chest, his hackles rising, his amber eyes fixed on the treeline to the east.
“What is it?” Rion asked, rising from where he had been sitting beside Lark.
Noctis didn’t answer. He couldn’t, of course, but even if he could have spoken, Lark suspected he would have been beyond words. The primal growl in his throat spoke of ancient enemies and blood.
Then she heard it. The rustle of movement through the undergrowth. Too much movement coming from too many directions. Not a single animal, but a pack, circling, surrounding them.
“Weapons,” Darian said quietly. He already had his sword drawn, the blade catching the firelight as he moved to put his back to a tree.
Lark called her daggers into existence, the pulse of aetheria responding to her will, solid blades of light forming in her palms. Beside her, Pippa had produced one of her explosive devices from her pack, a small copper and glass sphere that Lark knew from the battle on Autumncrown’s Western Wall could level everything within a fifteen-foot radius.
“Rion,” she said. “Stay close.”
He nodded, his hands flexing at his sides, reaching instinctively for magic that hadn’t answered him in weeks.
The first wolf emerged from the shadows, and Lark understood immediately that this was not a normal attack.
The creature was twisted, perverse. Its fur was matted and patchy, falling out in clumps to reveal skin that had gone gray and mottled beneath.
Its eyes were a deep, pulsing red, like embers burning in skull-deep sockets.
Black ooze seeped from its muzzle, dripping onto the ground.
And woven through its body, visible just beneath the skin, were threads of darkness that writhed independently of the wolf’s movements, living corruption.
Dark aetheria.
“Moons,” Pippa breathed. “What happened to them?”
“Duskwood.” Lark’s voice was hard. “His influence is spreading. Whatever happens, don’t let them touch you. That corruption could spread.”
More wolves emerged from the trees. Five.
Seven. Ten. They moved in perfect coordination, fanning out to encircle the camp, their red eyes fixed on the travelers with a hunger that went beyond mere predation.
Black ichor dripped from their jaws, pooling on the ground, leaving trails of dead grass in their wake.
Noctis launched himself at the nearest wolf before anyone could stop him.
The two animals collided in a snarling tangle of fur and teeth, rolling across the clearing in a blur of black and gray.
Noctis was larger, stronger, uncorrupted, but his opponent fought with a viciousness that seemed immune to pain, snapping and clawing even as Noctis’s jaws closed around its throat.
Then, the rest of the pack attacked.
Lark moved on instinct, training taking over where conscious thought would have been too slow.
Her first dagger took a wolf through the eye as it lunged for her throat.
Her second opened a gash across another’s flank, black ooze spraying from the wound as the creature stumbled.
She danced back, keeping distance, knowing that a single touch of that corruption could be deadly.
The wolves were fast. Faster than they should have been, their movements jerky and unnatural, as though something other than instinct was controlling their limbs.
And they didn’t react to wounds the way normal animals would.
She sliced one across the muzzle, but it didn’t flinch.
It just kept coming, inky black ooze streaming down its face, those horrible red eyes fixed on her, unwavering.
She heard Darian’s sword singing through the air, heard Pippa shouting a warning about blast radius, heard Rion calling her name. The air smelled of blood and something acrid and vile, the stench of corruption made manifest.
A wolf got past her guard. She twisted, bringing a dagger up, but she was off-balance, stumbling …
A ball of flame streaked past her, so close she felt the heat near her cheek, before it struck the wolf dead center.
The creature exploded in a burst of fire and light; the blast catching two more wolves nearby and sending them tumbling, their corrupted fur igniting instantly.
They howled with an almost mechanical sound, not animal at all, and then they were burning, the dark threads beneath their skin writhing as they were consumed.
Lark spun.
Rion stood with his arm still extended, his fingers splayed, his eye wide with shock. But even as she watched, he was already summoning, another ball of fire forming in his palm, bright and fierce and impossibly large.
He threw it.
The fireball found its target with uncanny accuracy, detonating on impact in bursts of flame that sent corrupted wolves rolling across the scorched ground.
The clearing became chaos in fire and shadow; the darkness pushed back by explosions of light.
Wolves that tried to flee were cut down by Darian’s sword or caught by Pippa’s carefully aimed device, which she finally threw into a cluster of three that had been circling toward Rion’s blind side.
The blast leveled all three of them. The explosion also knocked Pippa off her feet, but Darian was there to catch her before she hit the ground.
And then, suddenly, it was over.
Rion stood in the center of the clearing, his chest heaving, his hands still raised.
Small flames still shimmered around his fingers, already guttering and dying as his concentration wavered.
Around him, the bodies of tainted wolves smoldered, the black ooze that had leaked from them burning away to nothing, leaving only ash and blackened earth.
“Rion.” Lark’s voice came out hoarse. “Rion, are you alright?”
He looked at his hands. Turned them over, studying the palms, the fingers, as though seeing them for the first time. His whole body was shaking.
“I felt it,” he said. His voice was strange, distant. “I felt it come back. All at once.”
“That was …” Pippa had regained her feet and was staring at the devastation around them. “Rion, I’ve seen fire witches work. Those fireballs, the size, the control, that’s not something most fire witches can do.”
“No.” Rion’s trembling hadn’t stopped.
Noctis trotted over to his master’s side, bloody but alive.
The wolf he had been fighting lay motionless nearby, its throat torn out, the dark threads beneath its skin already fading to gray.
Rion reached down automatically to check the wolf for injuries, and Noctis pressed into his hand with a low whine.
“Are you hurt?” Darian had sheathed his sword and was moving through the camp, checking the perimeter, making sure no corrupted wolves had escaped. “Anyone?”
Lark took stock. Her arms ached from throwing daggers, and she could feel where the heat of Rion’s first fireball had singed the hair near her temple. But she was whole. Unbitten. Uncorrupted.
“We’re fine,” she said. “Thanks to Rion.”
Rion had sunk to his knees in the scorched grass, his hands still held before him as though he expected flames to erupt from them at any moment.
She went to him, knelt beside him, and took his trembling hands in her own.
“You’re all right,” she said. “You’re all right. It’s over.”
“I could feel it.” His voice was barely a whisper.
“All of it. The fire was there, but it was so much more than it’s ever been.
” When he looked at her, she saw wonder in his eye, and fear.
“Before, summoning fire was like coaxing a spark from flint. This was like calling down lightning. It just came when I needed it.”
“And you controlled it.” She squeezed his hands, feeling the heat within him, the fire that had returned to its home. “Every one went exactly where you wanted it to go. You didn’t hurt any of us.”
“I almost hit you. That first one …”
“Killed the wolf that was about to kill me. You saved my life.” She caught his eye and held it. “Whatever this is, whatever’s changed, we’ll figure it out. Together.”
The word hung between them, heavy with meaning.
Rion took a shaky breath. Then another. Slowly, the trembling eased.
“Together,” he repeated.
They didn’t sleep that night.
The scorched clearing felt unclean, haunted by the violence that had occurred there. They gathered their things and walked until they found another spot, further from the road, hidden in a copse of trees that seemed untouched by corruption.
Darian took first watch, his expression grim, his sword across his knees. Pippa curled up beside him, not sleeping but not quite awake either, her eyes fixed on the darkness between the trees.
Lark sat with Rion, her back against a fallen log, her body still humming with the aftermath of the fight. He had been quiet since the attack, processing what had happened, what he had done.
“It’s stronger,” he said finally. “The fire. It’s always been there, but now I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like before I was drinking from a stream, but now I have access to the whole river.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t know. It should be good, shouldn’t it? More power, more ability to fight what’s coming.” He paused. “But I’ve never been able to do that before. To summon it so quickly, to throw it, to control it. It’s like something unlocked.”
“Maybe it did.” Lark leaned her head against his shoulder. “Morena said your magic locked itself away to protect you. Maybe when it came back, it came back changed. Stronger because of what you survived.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“Everything about the past few turns has been unlikely. Why should this be any different?”
He was quiet. Then, his arm came around her, pulling her closer.
“You almost died,” he said. “The wolf was right there. I saw it lunging for you, and I couldn’t think about anything else. About control or technique or any of the things they teach you. I just wanted it dead. I wanted anything that would hurt you to burn.”
“And you burned them.”
He let out a breath. “It felt right, though. Not just the magic coming back, but using it to protect you. Like that’s what it was for. What it’s always been for.”
“Don’t go getting poetic on me. Pippa will be intolerable.”
That surprised a laugh out of him, small and tired but genuine. His arm tightened around her.
“I love you,” he said. “Have I mentioned that?”
“Once or twice. I don’t mind hearing it again.”
“I nearly watched you die tonight, and I burned those wolves to ashes to stop it.” He pressed a kiss on the top of her head. “I would burn a great deal more than that for you, I think.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Let’s hope.”
They sat together as the night deepened around them, the darkness soft and unthreatening after the chaos of the attack. Somewhere nearby, an owl called. Noctis, who had been lying with his head on his paws, lifted an ear at the sound but didn’t rise.
“We should tell Helena about this as soon as possible,” Rion said eventually. “About the corrupted wolves. It means Duskwood’s influence is spreading south. If it's reached this far, he could be close …”
“If that’s true, then nowhere is safe.”
“Exactly,” he agreed. “All the more reason to find allies. To make sure the information from the archive reaches people who can use it.”
“Morena sent the message. If the Peakswift made it through, Autumncrown already knows.”
“If.” He shook his head. “Too many ifs. Too many variables we can’t control.”
“Then we control what we can. We get to Summerbright. We convince the enclave to listen. And we figure out the rest as we go.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It’s not. But complicated doesn’t mean impossible.”
The fire Darian had built crackled softly, casting dancing shadows across the trees.
Lark watched the flames and thought about what Rion had done, the power that had poured out of him when he needed it most. Fire magic was not uncommon, Every enclave had at least one fire witch, but what Rion had done tonight was rare.
“Go to sleep,” she said. “I’ll keep watch for a while.”
“I should.”
“Sleep, Rion. You just threw more fire in five minutes than most witches summon in a year. Your body needs to recover.”
He wanted to argue. She could see it in the set of his brow, the tension in his shoulders. But exhaustion won out over stubbornness, and eventually his head dropped to rest against hers, his breathing slowing as sleep claimed him.
Lark sat in the darkness, watching the fire burn, and thought about the road ahead. Four more days to Summerbright. Four more days of travel, of danger. But they had survived tonight, and Rion had his magic back, stronger than ever.
And somewhere in the darkness ahead was an enclave full of witches who might just listen to what they had to say.