Chapter 166

Kaelen

The first rule of fire is that it tells the truth.

It doesn’t lie. It doesn’t soften. It doesn’t pretend restraint when it wants to burn. You can shape it, guide it, starve it—but you can’t make it be anything other than what it is.

Right now, my fire is telling me exactly how bad this just got.

I feel it in the way the land tightens around us as we move, in the way Maren’s presence beside