Prologue
I knew I was going to die. From the moment I saw the flames lick the walls, I knew nothing would let me escape my fate.
The square glowed before it burned. Lanterns hung from iron hooks, casting warm amber light over the stone plaza and the marble monument of the Twin Sisters. Their carved faces lifted toward the sky in frozen courage and towered over everyone. I walked through town, tired after hours of archery training, when I heard the festival roar to life. Moon cakes spilled from food carts, melted candle wax dripped onto the pavement, and rain still clung faintly to the earth from that afternoon. The celebration honored our town’s founders, the sisters who set out to make a living but ended up starting something bigger. Today, the city honored their memories, but somewhere along the way, everything turned.
For years, outsiders envied the city’s potential. Villages, established long before ours, surrounded us like flies. They claimed that because they came first, our energy, clean water, and food belonged to them. Instead of merging with our burg, their pride pushed them into poverty instead. The outskirts of our city held the homeless and poor, and we built fences and gates to keep thieves out. This only created more problems. Riots and angry mobs eventually crossed over, seizing and collecting any valuables they could grab before fleeing before anyone caught them.
But this night changed everything. The sizzling of tempura snapped into crackling smoke and fire. I watched hot flames weave through cracks in the cobblestone, gobbling up dried leaves as they spread. Then the shouting erupted. It rolled through the crowd like thunder, sharp and jagged, shredding easy laughter into panic. Voices hardened into fury, and in the chaos, a glass bottle smashed against the base of the monument, spilling fire like liquid sunlight.
I knew exactly what happened. An attack.
Across the plaza, I spotted masked figures racing through the smoke in black coverings that hid their faces. But most people focused on the disaster in front of them. Flames climbed fast, greedy and wild, consuming the stone bodies of the sisters until their pale faces glowed molten orange. Heat slammed into me like a wall, dry and suffocating, stealing my breath as people surged in every direction, colliding into one another.
Before I could think, I ran down an alleyway, chasing another dark figure. I knew I couldn’t stop the fire, but I could find the people behind it. If I captured even one of them, maybe I could stop this from happening again.
I raced through more road before I finally caught the masked outcast. They ducked and ran into a burning building, right before I could make out their face. I followed them in without realizing it would end in both our deaths. Suddenly, as I hurried to catch up, a flaming beam tore loose from the collapsing entrance and plunged in a shower of embers, trapping me inside with the runaway. In the process, it struck my arm.
I yelped in pain. The burn felt less like pain and more like obliteration. White-hot and merciless, it blistered flesh beneath its force as the smell of burning skin cut through the smoke. My scream vanished into the noise, swallowed whole by the inferno. I dropped to my knees, writhing in pain, black dots swimming through my vision. I ripped a piece of cloth from my tank top and patted out the flames while screaming in terror.
The masked figure stood frozen for only a heartbeat, their silhouette trembling in the orange blaze as sparks fell between us like burning stars. I reached for them, fingers stretching through smoke and heat, but they turned and disappeared deeper into the burning dark before I could see their face. One second, they stood there, close enough to touch, and the next, the fire swallowed them completely, as if the flames had eaten them alive.
My vision blurred. Smoke warped the edges of the room, and the walls groaned as if the building exhaled its last breath. Heat pressed in from every side, relentless and suffocating, and my arm—my arm no longer felt like mine. It went numb and screamed all at once, skin raw and ruined beneath charred fabric. My lungs clawed for air, but I breathed only ash. Black spots spread through my vision, swallowing the firelight until everything drifted far away, muffled and unreal.
Then the floor beneath me trembled violently. Wood splintered. Glass burst behind me. And just before darkness dragged me under, I felt it—strong arms wrapped around my waist and hauled me upward like I weighed nothing at all. A voice shouted something I couldn’t understand. My body hung limp against whoever carried me, my head lolling against their shoulder as freezing night air hit my smoke-burned skin.
It was the last thing I remembered—the sudden cold, the smell of soot, and the impossible realization that somehow, against every law of fate and fire, I was still alive. A miracle, everyone called it.
I called it fate.
