The scar was alive.
Evelyn knelt at its edge, her palm hovering just inches above the jagged fracture in the earth where the rock had split as if by blade or fury. It hummed—not with sound, but with vibration, like the soft tension before lightning. Across its surface, veins of molten silver pulsed faintly, threads of something older than stone, threading deep into the crust of the world.
She swallowed. The core in her chest—no longer dormant, no longer silent—answered with a low thrum. It did not warn. It welcomed.
Torren stood behind her, limping, his arm bound to his chest. He'd stopped asking questions an hour ago. Dust clung to his lashes, and his eyes bore the haunted sheen of someone who'd walked too far from the last place he'd felt safe.
"You feel it, don't you?" Evelyn asked, though she already knew the answer.
He didn't nod, just looked at the wound in the earth, then back at her. "I feel something."
They had followed the stone markers east from the Dust Village, each carved post whispering old tales in forgotten runes. A path once walked by Wardens, the stories said. Now barely remembered. The shriven flame inside Evelyn had flared brighter with each step, tugging her like a compass that obeyed emotion more than direction.
The scar cut through the plateau in a sinuous line, bordered by fallen monoliths whose surfaces bore the fading echo of ancient glyphwork—some peeled like old paint, others seared clean by forces no longer present.
She walked along its edge now, careful, reverent, her boots sending up clouds of ash-laced dust. The farther she walked, the stronger the humming grew—not from the ground, but from within her. A whisper behind her heartbeat.
Remember.
She stopped. Blinked. Something had shifted in the light.
A shimmer in the air just ahead—a mirage, perhaps, except it shimmered wrong. Inverted colors. Heat without source. Evelyn stepped forward.
The world rippled.
Suddenly she stood not in wasteland, but on a high ridge bathed in dusklight. The Singing Scar stretched beneath her, but alive—silver threads of corelight wove up from it in ribbons, joining the stars above in slow, dancing arcs. She heard voices—not in her ears, but in her bones. Singing, layered like choral harmonics, impossibly old.
And in the center of it all stood a woman cloaked in a robe of stitched flame and smoke. Her eyes were silver. Her skin shimmered as though lit from within.
"You called me," Evelyn whispered.
The woman said nothing. She extended a hand.
In her palm flickered a familiar ember—the Heartfire. Evelyn's own. Yet here, it pulsed brighter, clearer. Untamed.
Evelyn stepped forward—then blinked. Torren was shaking her.
"Evelyn, Evelyn—you've been standing there like stone. Your skin's gone cold."
The vision was gone. Only the cracked scar remained, humming softly beneath her boots.
She staggered back. "She was here."
Torren's brow furrowed. "Who?"
"I don't know. The same woman from the fire-dreams. Silver-eyed. She had my flame in her hand."
He didn't argue. That scared her more than if he had.
They made camp in the lee of a collapsed shrine near the edge of the scar. Torren cooked dried grains and root-flesh over a low fire while Evelyn stared into the night, half-listening to the wind sing over the open rock. It sounded like voices. Too many to count.
That night, she dreamt of the scar again.
Only this time, it screamed.