The Ember Throne | Chapter 1: The Spark in the Leaves
The forest breathed with the hush of secrets.
Evening mist curled low along the moss-laced roots of the silverleaf trees, and the wind whispered lullabies through their trembling canopies. Beneath their boughs, a girl moved like smoke — quiet, careful, carrying a satchel of dried herbs and a bone-handled knife still red from the root she’d just carved.
Aelira Thornvale did not know her bloodline could set empires ablaze.
She only knew the fire was waking again.
Her boots whispered against fallen leaves, damp with the day’s rain. A distant owl called out in the gloom, and she paused, gaze sweeping the thicket. Nothing moved but the shadows.
She pressed her palm against the pouch at her side. The phoenix-shaped birthmark just above her collarbone thrummed faintly, as if stirred by the air itself. It always did that — pulsed — when something wasn’t right.
She told herself it was just a storm coming.
The village lights flickered ahead — small amber glows behind leather-curtained windows, tucked between the old trees like lanterns in a shrine. Thornmere was quiet, always. Hidden. The kind of place where people healed wounds with bark tea and whispered of fire like it was a curse.
Which, to them, it was.
Aelira stepped into the clearing, heart still heavy from the day’s work. Brenna, the herbalist who had raised her, had fallen ill again — something deeper than fever, something that made her skin pale as ash. None of the usual roots had worked.
And Aelira had begun to feel it, too. The warmth inside her — it wasn’t illness. It was pressure. Something building.
Fire, she thought, though she didn’t want to.
As she passed the village square — really just a ring of flat stones and a firepit rarely lit — she caught sight of Elder Marn at the well, his back stooped, his eyes always watching. She lowered her head and quickened her pace.
He said nothing, but the air felt colder around him.
Inside the hut, Brenna slept beneath furs, her breathing shallow. Aelira lit a lantern, careful to use the flint and not… the other way.
She knelt, grinding the ironroot to a pulp, hands stained reddish-brown. Her fingers trembled slightly.
The flame inside her stirred again — not in her heart, but in her blood. It coiled beneath her skin like a serpent waking from slumber.
She clenched her fists.
Not now. Please, not now.
And that’s when it happened.
A scream pierced the night.
Aelira spun, nearly knocking over the lantern. She dashed to the door and threw it open — and froze.
Elder Marn stepped forward, staff in hand, eyes wild.
“She’s here,” he rasped. “The flame-witch walks among us.”
No… no, no.
The flame pulsed in time with her heartbeat. She hadn’t lit it. She didn’t even try. It simply… responded.
To her.
Eyes turned. Toward her.
She backed away. The birthmark on her chest blazed with searing heat, and she felt it again — that pull. Not outwards. Inwards.
They would come for her now.
She didn’t wait.
She grabbed her satchel, wrapped a cloak over her shoulders, and fled into the trees before they could raise their torches.
Behind her, voices rose. Boots crunched. Dogs barked.
The forest swallowed her.
She ran until her legs screamed and the cold stung her cheeks raw. Branches tore at her clothes, leaves whipped past her face. Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled — an alarm. A hunter’s call.
They’ll hunt me like a beast, she thought. Like they did the others.
At the edge of a ridge, she collapsed beside a fallen log, gasping. Her hands shook. The phoenix on her skin glowed faintly, casting a shimmer beneath her collar. The fire inside her hadn’t dimmed. If anything, it burned brighter now — alive, as if tasting the wind for the first time.
She’d felt this once before, when she was little. A dream, maybe — or a memory — of a red-haired woman singing while a comet blazed across the sky. She never told Brenna.
But tonight…
She looked up.
And there it was.
A single streak of silver fire arced across the stars — a comet, long-tailed and ancient, carving the heavens.
She stared, heart pounding.
And something shifted.
In the stillness that followed, a whisper ran through the leaves.
Not words.
Just knowing.
You were never meant to hide.
END OF CHAPTER 1
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