The Fire That Remembers

The world tasted wrong after almost-transformation.

I knelt in the hollow's heart, watching silver leak from the cracked bone shard like blood from a wound that didn't understand it was supposed to clot. Around me, the threadless children lay scattered—some still, some shaking, some whispering in languages that predated speech.

The altar wept light through its fractures. Each drop hit stone and spread like infection, creating patterns that shifted when I tried to focus. My hands—when had they started trembling?—were stained with ash that wouldn't wash clean, marked with symbols I didn't remember drawing.

"Get them up." My voice came out raw, foreign. "We need to—"

"No."

The mirror-boy stood among the fallen, untouched by the chaos. His burned face held too much knowing, and when he spoke, I heard echoes of the voices that had poured through the children's mouths.

"You stopped it." Not accusation. Statement. "The hollow is still hungry. The price is still owed."

I tried to stand, but my legs had forgotten their purpose. The shard—the shard that had been my constant burning companion—curled inside me like a scream that didn't know which mouth to use. Hot, then cold, then nothing. Silence where there had always been presence.

"The price was them," I said, gesturing at the children who'd offered themselves to ancient hunger. "I won't—"

"The price was change. Transformation. Evolution. You gave them the spark but not the flame. Now they burn incomplete." He knelt beside me, close enough that I could smell the copper-sweet scent of divine infection on his breath. "Selvannara would have—"

The name hit me like a physical blow. My bones ached with it, old as marrow, deep as the first cut. The girl I used to be curled around it like a wound learning it had always been there, just scabbed over with lesser names. Aria. Miralys. Small words for small lives that couldn't hold what I was becoming.

Selvannara. The thread that cuts itself.

"Don't." The word barely made it past my teeth. "Don't call me that."

"Why not? It's what you are. What you've always been beneath the—"

"Enough." Dorian's voice cut through the prophecy. He moved through the scattered children with careful steps, checking pulses, adjusting limbs, doing the small mortal things that mattered when divine things had grown too large.

Our eyes met across the carnage-that-wasn't, and I saw what he saw: children caught between states, some beginning to stir, others too still. The scarred boy flexed his transformed finger over and over, watching the extra joints bend with fascination that bordered on hunger.

"Can you stand?" Dorian offered his hand—the first time he'd willingly reached for me since the shard had grown jealous.

I took it. His skin felt like memory, warm and real and fleeting. He pulled me up, steadied me when the world tilted, didn't let go when he should have.

"We need to get them to the surface," he said, but his eyes said different things. Said goodbye things. Said ending things.

The children who could walk helped those who couldn't. We made a broken procession up through the seven turns, past the seven stones, into forest that had gone too quiet. Even the blood-weeping trees had stopped, as if waiting to see what crawled from the hollow they'd guarded.

By the time we reached our camp, exhaustion pulled at every bone. I watched the threadless arrange themselves in their sevens—always sevens now—some whispering to each other in voices too low to catch. Fear moved through them like wind through leaves. They kept glancing at me, then away, as if I'd become too bright to look at directly.

The confusion was worst among the youngest. They clung to each other, understanding something fundamental had shifted but not what. Not why. One girl—barely six summers—kept touching her chest where her thread should have been, as if checking for changes she couldn't see.

"It's spreading," Dorian said quietly. We stood at the edge of camp, his pack already at his feet. Ready. Decided. "Whatever you started down there—"

"I stopped it." The words tasted like lies and lavender.

"You didn't stop it." He turned to face me fully, and the weight of leaving sat heavy in his shoulders. "You became it."

The shard pulsed once—weak, desperate. Like it was trying to remind me it existed. Like it was afraid I'd forget our bond in the face of older magic.

Behind him, two children had begun to harmonize without meaning to. The sound made my teeth ache. Another child—the one who'd spoken in tongues—sat with smoke still trickling from her lips, looking lost.

"They needed me," I said, but the words felt small.

"They needed Aria. The girl who survived rejection. Who learned to be nothing so she could be everything." His hand moved to my face, fingers hovering just shy of contact. "But Selvannara? The thread that cuts itself? She doesn't save. She transforms. And transformation—"

"—isn't always kindness," I finished.

His hand dropped. The distance between us stretched wider than the physical space allowed.

"Stay," I said. One word. All I had left.

"I can't watch you become her." Simple. Honest. Final.

He walked away, and I let him. What else was there to do? The shard flared at the thought of making him stay—brief heat that tasted like possibility. I crushed it down, felt it whimper and retreat.

It wasn't until full dark that I noticed her.

The pearl-glowing girl sat apart from the others, light moving beneath her skin like slow tides. The other children gave her space—not from fear but from something older. Recognition, maybe. Or reverence for what she might be becoming.

I approached slowly, each step measured. The others watched but didn't interfere.

"Does it hurt?" I asked, kneeling just out of reach.

She tilted her head, considering. When she spoke, her voice came out layered—child and ancient and something between.

"It remembers."

"What remembers?"

"The fire. The first fire. Before it learned to burn." She blinked, and for a moment she was just a child again. Scared. Small. Glowing with power that might save or consume her. "It wants to remember more. Should I let it?"

I looked at her—really looked. Saw the divine infection spreading beneath her skin like silver veins. Saw the moment balanced on a knife's edge.

The question hung between us, heavy as prophecy. Around us, the other children had gone silent. Waiting. Always waiting for me to decide their fates.

But this wasn't my choice alone.

I reached out slowly, gave her time to pull away. When my fingers touched her glowing hand, the shard flinched—as if her light scorched something it couldn't name. Her skin burned cold, like starlight given flesh.

"I'm not afraid," she whispered. "Are you?"

I was. Terrified. Of what they'd become. Of what I'd become. Of the name Selvannara and all the memories it might wake. Of the price that was still owed to the hollow that hungered.

But fear had never stopped me before.

I squeezed her hand gently, felt the power pulse between us—not taking, not giving, just acknowledging what was already in motion.

"Tell me what you remember," I said.

And when she spoke, the forest remembered too.