The village of Ember Hollow had a secret: their fires never died.
For generations, the townsfolk tended their hearths with a devotion bordering on reverence. The flames flickered blue at the edges, warm but never consuming, fed by an ancient pact no one quite remembered. Twelve-year-old Taryn was the youngest Fire Keeper in history—her small hands tasked with guarding the village’s central flame while the elders slept.
"If it goes out," her grandmother warned, "everything goes with it."
Then the storms came.
Rain lashed the valley for weeks, drowning fields and choking chimneys with damp. One by one, the hearths guttered out—until only Taryn’s flame remained, a single trembling tongue of blue in the dark.
She cupped it in her palms, breath shallow. The wind howled through the cracks in the stone. The fire shrank.
Think.
Taryn closed her eyes and did the forbidden: she spoke to it. Not a prayer—a promise.
"Take what you need."
Heat seared her fingertips. The flame surged, twisting up her arms in ribbons of gold. It didn’t burn. It remembered her—the spark in her ribs, the ember of her breath.
When dawn broke, the villagers found her curled around a newborn blaze, the storm scorched away.
And for the first time in centuries, the fire answered when it was called.
