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**Chapter Two: The Path Beyond Flame**
I didn't sleep.
Not with the sky still smelling of smoke and my heart splintered into too many pieces to count. The ruins of our cottage were quiet now, just ember ghosts flickering against dawn. I sat in the dirt, the pendant clutched in my palm, Maama's storybook beside me, its pages fluttering in a breeze that carried no comfort.
I should've cried. But everything inside me was ash.
When the sun fully rose, I made myself stand. My clothes were singed. My feet bare. But I didn't feel the cold.
There was no one left in Eldenridge to help me. Maybe no one ever had.
I opened Maama's book again. Its pages had always been nonsense to me—strange glyphs, stars etched into the margins, creatures that never lived. But now… now something shimmered.
On the inside cover, faint beneath the ink, was a map. And on that map, one place circled in red: *Isoba's Spine*. I'd heard the name before—once, whispered in a tale Maama had told me when she thought I was asleep. Something about fire-born blood and an exile who vanished into the mountain fog.
It was a start.
I packed what I could scavenge: the book, the pendant, a dented flask. No goodbyes. Just one long look at the tree that used to sing me to sleep.
Then I walked. Past the silent houses. Past the stones of Eldenridge. Past the world I had always known.
By midday, the forest swallowed me.
The light here was different—dappled and dusky, like the woods were watching. Branches arched overhead like ribs. Every birdcall felt like a warning. Still, I kept walking.
That's when I saw her.
A woman in silver robes standing in the path, her hair like water, her eyes too old to belong to any living soul. I froze.
"You carry her fire," she said, voice soft as falling leaves.
"Who are you?" I asked, louder than I meant.
Instead of answering, she reached into her cloak and pulled out a flame—not a torch, not a trick. A flame that floated above her palm, golden and humming.
"She knew it would come to this," the woman said. "The girl born of lost blood. The ember left behind."
I didn't know what to say. I didn't even know if she was real.
But the pendant around my neck burned warm against my chest.
"Go," she said, and vanished. Just like the figure in the woods.
So I kept going. Through roots and rivers, into the hills that clawed at the clouds. Toward the place the map whispered of—toward Isoba's Spine.
Toward a name I'd never known.
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