{FLASHBACK}
"Now promise me... Promise me that you'll protect your sister, that you'll both survive."
"I–I promise."
{FLASHBACK ENDS}
ARIA'S POV
The soil was still warm.
I sat on my knees, my hands raw and torn, fingers trembling from hours of digging. Dirt and blood caked beneath my nails and smeared my arms up to the elbows. I could still taste the earth on my tongue where I'd bitten down, trying not to scream.
Mira lay beside me. Still, pale and cold.
I had no coffin. No linens. Only her broken body, wrapped in what remained of my cloak. Her hair was stiff with blood, but her face looked peaceful now. Like she was just sleeping.
I told myself that lie over and over again.
Told myself maybe she'd open her eyes and scold me for crying so much. Call me a baby. Giggle the way she used to whenever I tripped over my shoes or burned the soup.
But she didn't.
She never would again.
The guilt that I carried was like a dagger plunged deep into my chest. And I had no one to blame but myself.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, my voice breaking. "I promised. I promised I'd protect you and I didn't. I wasn't fast enough. I wasn't strong enough. I should've died instead of you."
I lifted her gently. She was so light now as though the life that had once filled her, her laughter, her endless questions, her stubborn spirit, had taken all her weight with it.
I lowered her into the grave I'd made. Every muscle screamed in protest but I moved slowly, carefully, like she might still feel it.
Like it might hurt her.
Once she was resting in the dirt, I sat back on my heels and pressed her locket to my lips. "May the gods take your soul, Mira. May they carry you somewhere the pain can't reach. Somewhere you can laugh again. Play again. Where you don't have to hide and live in fear."
My voice shook with every word. Each syllable felt like glass in my throat.
"I'm sorry," I whispered again. "I'm so… sorry."
Tears blurred my vision as I picked up the first handful of dirt. I dropped it gently over her chest.
Then another. And another.
Dirt spilled through my trembling fingers. It clung to her skin, to the folds of my cloak, to everything. I hated it. I hated every moment.
But I didn't stop. I couldn't. Not until her face disappeared beneath the soil.
Not until she was gone.
When the last of it had been packed down, I dropped to my knees and collapsed over the mound, my face buried in the dirt.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
I said it like a prayer. Like a curse. Until my voice gave out and my throat burned raw.
And even then, I stayed there. Shaking, broken, and alone.
—
The silence after the storm wasn't peaceful.
It was suffocating.
It clung to the air like smoke, thick and heavy, pressing into my lungs until I couldn't breathe. It wrapped around my shoulders like grief itself, cold and unrelenting.
I moved through what was left of Lyndholm, though calling it a village now felt like a lie. Ash fell like snow, a quiet mockery of winter. The sky above was smeared in soot and the stink of burnt flesh. My feet left shallow prints in the grey powder as I walked.
The village I grew up in was…
Gone.
The bakery was just a hollow skeleton now, its wooden bones snapping softly in the wind. Someone's shawl fluttered from a window frame, half-burned, like a ghost waving goodbye.
My eyes stung, but I didn't cry. I couldn't. The tears had dried somewhere between Mira's last breath and the fire that followed.
I passed the market square. Or what used to be. The old fruit stall lay collapsed in on itself, blackened and broken. A hand poked out from beneath the rubble, melted anf fused to the wood. Fingers curled around something I could recognize.
"Wait… is that… an apple?"
My knees buckled.
It was him, the fruit vendor. The one who always saved me the reddest apple and never once asked for coin.
His kindness. His smile.
All gone. Burned away.
Because of me.
I staggered forward. My hands trembled as I touched the frame of a door and it disintegrated beneath my fingers, falling to ash.
"I didn't mean to…" I whispered. "I didn't mean for this to happen…"
But the fire didn't care.
It didn't care who I loved or what I lost. It just took.
Mira's locket hung around my neck, warm against my chest. Too warm. Like it still carried her inside it. Like it remembered what I'd done even if I tried to forget.
I opened it.
Her face stared back at me, smiling. Innocent. A tiny portrait frozen in time. I pressed it to my heart and closed my eyes, trying to hold what little I had left.
But the village wouldn't let me forget.
Their faces haunted me.
The old woman who knitted scarves in the winter. The boy who raced me down the hills. The baker who gave me sweet rolls when Mama wasn't looking.
Now they were nothing but smoke and bones.
A sound broke through the quiet. A quiet, broken gasp.
I froze.
Then it came again, faint and rasping. I moved toward it, climbing over shattered beams and scorched bodies until I found him.
He was young. Barely older than me. Half buried beneath a collapsed house, his body twisted and burned. His skin had peeled away in places, and bone gleamed through the blackened meat of his side. But his eyes were open.
He was still alive, but barely.
"Gods…" I dropped beside him. "No, no, please. Hold on."
His lips moved. I leaned closer, but his words were just air. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. He was dying. And I couldn't stop it.
Still I took his hand and I held it tightly.
He looked at me, and I don't know what he saw.
A girl? A witch? A monster?
I wasn't sure.
A moment later, he took his last breath. I didn't move. I stared at him, at the remains of what was once a person. Then I stood slowly, my legs shaking under the weight of it all. The world around me crackled and burned. Sparks drifted through the air like dying stars.
I looked down at my hands.
A monster's hands.
They were blackened, caked in ash and blood. My magic still crackled faintly, glowing in angry pulses beneath my skin. My fingers twitched and for a second, I thought I might explode again.
This is what they feared. This is why they hunt us.
Because we destroy everything.
I clenched my fists, turned away from the ruin and forced my feet forward. The village behind me was a graveyard now. I didn't belong there anymore.
I walked until the fire was just a memory behind me. Until my sobs were the only sound that filled the air.
—
The sun had started to rise.
It painted the horizon in soft orange and gold, casting long shadows over the still-smoking ruins of Lyndholm. Ash curled in the air like breath from a dying mouth.
And through that silence came hooves.
Dozens of them.
They crushed the earth in tight, disciplined rhythm. At the front of the formation rode a man clad in black iron, his cape bearing the royal crest of Aradel.
Commander Throne Rhaegor.
His mount, a massive black steed, snorted smoke as it stalked through the destruction. Rhaegor's face was cold as ice. The blade at his hip was infamous. It had tasted witchblood more times than most men had drawn breath.
The Severance had come. An elite army of witch hunters serving the King and Queen of Aradel.
Behind him, soldiers fanned out through the village. They moved with silent precision, stepping over corpses, kicking aside splinters of what used to be lives.
No one spoke.
There was no need to.
Rhaegor's horse came to a stop in what had once been the village square. He dismounted slowly, the ash crunching beneath his boots. His gaze swept across the blackened landscape.
Then he knelt.
He pressed a gloved hand to the dirt beside a half-melted corpse and something sparked.
He inhaled slowly, his nostrils flaring.
The air was thick with the smell of smoke, blood and burned felt. But beneath that was…
Magic.
"She was here," he muttered.
One of the soldiers stepped closer. "Survivors?"
"No," Rhaegor said flatly. "Just ghosts."
He straightened, his expression tightening.
"She's untrained but powerful. Far too powerful to be left unchecked."
The soldier hesitated, eyes flicking toward the trees like he didn't want to find her. "Your orders, Commander?"
Rhaegor turned his gaze toward the trees.
"Find her," he said, his voice low and dangerous.
"And kill her."