Chapter Two: Ashes and Echoes

I don't remember how long I stood there, staring into the flames.

The fire that had swallowed my home was unlike anything I had ever seen. It didn't crackle and shift like normal flames—it roared, deep and hungry, as if it were a living thing. It devoured everything, leaving behind nothing but ash and ruin.

And inside that ruin were my parents. My brother.

I don't remember running into the wreckage. I only remember the heat, the way it wrapped around me, clawing at my skin as if warning me to stay away. But I didn't.

I couldn't.

I stumbled over what was left of the house, smoke burning my lungs. My hands tore through the rubble, searching—desperate—for anything. A hand. A voice. Anything.

Then I saw him.

My brother, collapsed near the center of what used to be our home. His body was burned, his clothes reduced to blackened scraps. But his hands—his hands were outstretched, fingers curled in a shape I recognized.

He had been casting.

He tried to control the fire.

But he couldn't.

Even as the most talented of us in fire magic, even as the one who had spent years studying its nature—he had been helpless. The flames hadn't just ignored him. They had consumed him.

And if he couldn't stop them…

I knew. I knew this fire wasn't normal.

The realization hit me like a blade to the chest. The flames weren't an accident. They weren't natural.

Something—or someone—had done this.

And they had made sure there was nothing left to salvage.

I kept searching through the ash, even as my body trembled with exhaustion. My mother's books—gone. My father's maps—destroyed. The tools, the relics, the knowledge my family had spent generations collecting—erased.

All I found was a single charred scrap of parchment, barely legible, but I could make out the symbols. Ancient, tangled, twisted together in a pattern I didn't recognize.

Dark magic.

I clenched my fists, my nails digging into my palms. This wasn't over.

Someone had done this. Someone had taken everything from me.

And I was going to find out who.