Chapter 4 The voice of Fire
The storm came without warning.
By dusk, the skies over Auradyn were blackened, thunder rolling across the ruined skyline. Wind howled through the bell tower where Lyra sat beside a flickering lantern, staring at her hands. The glow under her skin pulsed faintly, gold veins alive with heat.
She flexed her fingers. The flame stirred, eager.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw fire the warehouse burning, the bridge collapsing, Kael Thorne’s eyes in the smoke.
The voice returned, low and patient.
You fight me, little spark. Why?
Lyra tensed. “Because you’re not me.”
You carry my heart. You breathe my fire. You are more me than you know.
“Get out of my head.”
You called to me first.
Her jaw clenched. She wanted to scream, to drown the voice out, but every word vibrated through her bones like the beat of her own pulse. She wasn’t sure where she ended and it began anymore.
The dragon the soul that had bound itself to her wasn’t a ghost. It was alive inside her. Waiting. Watching.
Eira entered quietly, her cloak dripping rain. “Talking to yourself again?”
“Not exactly,” Lyra muttered.
Eira set down her satchel and knelt by the firepit, coaxing a spark with a flint. “The Inquisition has doubled its patrols. Kael Thorne’s declared martial law over the lower districts. He’s sealing the bridges tomorrow.”
“So we’re trapped,” Finn said from the corner, where he was cleaning his dagger.
“For now.”
Lyra looked up. “We can’t stay hidden forever. You said there were others people who remember the old ways.”
Eira hesitated. “There are whispers. The Ashen Circle. Smugglers, scholars, remnants of the dragon cults who went underground after the Purge. But they’ll only appear to those who bear the fire.”
Lyra’s heart quickened. “Then show me how.”
Eira met her gaze, unreadable. “You’re not ready.”
“Then make me ready.”
The training began before sunrise.
They climbed to the roof of the bell tower, where the city stretched below in grey fog. Eira stood opposite her, hair whipped by the wind, a circle of chalk drawn at their feet.
“Magic is not power,” Eira said. “It’s connection. The old bond between dragon and bearer was forged through breath through rhythm, not rage.”
Lyra crossed her arms. “It felt like rage when it saved me.”
“That wasn’t control. That was survival.”
Eira stepped closer, pressing a palm to Lyra’s chest. “The fire lives here. But it listens here.” She touched Lyra’s temple. “If you can’t quiet your thoughts, the flame will burn through you instead of for you.”
Lyra closed her eyes. Wind swept across the roof, carrying the scent of rain and smoke.
“Breathe,” Eira whispered. “In… and out.”
At first, nothing happened. Then the warmth in Lyra’s core began to rise, coiling like smoke through her veins. The voice stirred again, deep and resonant.
You seek balance… but balance is an illusion. Fire does not rest. It devours or it dies.
Lyra’s breath hitched. “Stop it.”
Eira frowned. “Stop what?”
“She’s talking again.”
“Let her. Don’t fight the voice. Listen.”
At last, the dragon purred. One who remembers how.
Lyra forced herself to focus. Images flashed behind her eyelids mountains of glass, a sun bleeding red over broken wings. Pain. Flight. Loss.
She gasped, stumbling back. “That that was you.”
“It’s a memory,” Eira said softly. “A shard of the dragon that bonded with you. You’re seeing what she saw before she died.”
“She?”
Eira nodded. “Her name was Aurenyx, the Emberwing. The last of her kind before the Purge.”
Lyra’s heart pounded. “Then she’s alive in me.”
“Part of her,” Eira corrected. “But if you let her dominate, you’ll vanish. There must be two minds in one flame, not one consuming the other.”
Lyra looked at her hands again, the gold glow flickering brighter. “Then teach me to keep my fire mine.”
Eira smiled faintly. “That’s the first lesson.”
By midday, Lyra’s arms ached, her breath raw. Eira pushed her harder than she thought possible. Meditation became movement, then combat drills learning to channel the fire not just through emotion, but through purpose.
When Lyra faltered, the dragon’s voice surged to fill the space. You hesitate. Fire does not.
She gritted her teeth. “Then teach me!”
Then burn.
The air shimmered around her. Flames erupted in a spiral, lashing outward before she could rein them in. Finn, watching from the staircase, swore and dove for cover.
Eira’s cloak caught a spark. She didn’t flinch. “Focus, Lyra!”
“I’m trying!”
“Don’t try. Feel it!”
Lyra inhaled sharply, drawing the fire inward. The flames pulsed, then folded into her palms like molten silk. The air hummed. For a moment, she stood bathed in gold light no pain, no fear, only power.
Then the light dimmed, and she sank to her knees, trembling.
Eira approached, eyes wide. “You did it.”
“I almost lost it.”
“That’s what control feels like at first fragile. But it’s there.”
Lyra looked at her hands. “It doesn’t feel like power. It feels like… sharing.”
Eira nodded. “That’s because it is. The dragonfire doesn’t belong to you. You belong to it, for as long as it allows.”
Finn climbed back up, coughing through the smoke. “Great. Remind me to train somewhere that isn’t flammable next time.”
Lyra laughed despite herself. It was the first time she’d laughed in days.
That night, rain hammered the city. The three huddled near the firepit, their faces lit by its soft orange glow.
Eira spread out old maps on the floor. “The Ashen Circle moves constantly. Their last known refuge was in the Catacombs beneath the Basilica. If we find them, they can help unlock the rest of your bond.”
“Under the Basilica?” Finn frowned. “Isn’t that Thorne’s stronghold?”
Eira nodded grimly. “Exactly why no one searches there.”
Lyra traced the lines on the map. “We’ll have to go through the market quarter first.”
“Which is crawling with Inquisitors,” Finn added.
Lyra looked up. “Then we’ll need a distraction.”
Eira’s lips curved. “I think I can manage that.”
Far across the city, Kael Thorne stood in his command tent, watching rain streak across the crimson banners outside. The air smelled of ash and ozone.
A messenger knelt before him. “We found traces of dragonfire near the old bell tower, my lord. She’s close.”
Kael turned, his expression unreadable. “And the reports of the Circle?”
“Scattered rumors, nothing solid. Some say they’re regrouping beneath the Basilica itself.”
Kael’s mouth twitched half a smile, half a sneer. “Then the girl will go there. They always run to myth when reality turns against them.”
He dismissed the messenger and stared into the storm. For the first time in years, he felt it the faint echo of something ancient, a heartbeat that didn’t belong to this age.
Dragonfire.
Once, long ago, he’d stood in its light and sworn an oath to destroy it forever. Now that same fire called to him again, whispering like an old god he thought he’d slain.
He closed his eyes. “You should have stayed buried, Emberwing.”
In the tower, Lyra couldn’t sleep.
She sat by the window, watching lightning crawl across the clouds. Her reflection in the glass flickered between human and something else—eyes rimmed in gold, faint scales glinting on her cheekbones.
The dragon’s voice stirred again, quieter this time. He hunts you because he fears you. He fears what you could awaken.
“Kael Thorne?”
He was once a Dragonkeeper. He betrayed the old oath, turned on his kin. He carries a wound no fire can heal.
Lyra’s breath caught. “You knew him?”
A lifetime ago.
Outside, thunder boomed. The realization struck her like a blade Kael wasn’t just hunting her. He was hunting his past.
And somewhere deep inside her, Aurenyx stirred not with anger, but with sorrow.
He killed me once, the voice whispered. He will try again.
Lyra pressed her palm to the glass, firelight dancing in her reflection. “Then this time,” she said softly, “we’ll both be ready.”
By dawn, the storm had passed. Smoke rose from the city as the bells began to toll again this time faster, urgent, a warning.
Finn burst into the room, breathless. “Inquisitors. Dozens of them.
They’re sweeping every block.”
Eira grabbed her weapons. “He’s found us.”
Lyra stood, the fire already awake beneath her skin. Her eyes glowed, gold and fierce.
“Then it’s time we stop running.”