The cold came in a single breath.
Not a gust.
Not a draft seeping through the stone walls.
But a sudden, slicing chill that crawled along Nyra's skin like the brush of unseen fingers.
She froze where she stood beside Kael's bed, her pulse hammering in her throat.
The presence she'd felt earlier—quiet, distant, watching—was no longer content with distance.
It pressed close now.
Close enough that her flame recoiled in instinct, flaring bright under her skin with a warning heat. Her breath left her in a thin, white plume, visible in the dim air.
Kael stiffened behind her.
"You feel that," he murmured, voice rough.
She nodded slowly.
But the truth was sharper.
She didn't just feel it.
She could almost hear it.
A whisper—too faint to form words, too cold to be anything human—skimming the edge of her mind like frost over glass.
Nyra wrapped her arms around herself, trying to steady the tremor running through her bones. "It's the same presence from earlier," she said. "Stronger."
Kael tried to rise again, but the moment he pushed off the bed, agony carved across his features. His knees buckled, and she caught him before he could fall, her hands sliding under his arms. Heat leapt from her skin to his, steadying him instinctively.
He gritted his teeth. "Don't—don't get closer to the window."
But the pull toward it had already begun.
The flame inside her reacted like a creature pacing at the boundary of its cage—eager, restless, recognizing something beyond the glass. Something familiar in the way the horizon trembled.
Nyra's eyes narrowed.
"It's calling me."
Kael's grip tightened on her wrist. "Then ignore it."
"It isn't that simple."
It was never that simple. Not since the awakening. The flame didn't just live in her now—it responded, it listened, it reached.
And something out there was reaching back.
The cold intensified, sweeping through the room in a pulse that made the candle flames gutter. The shadows quivered. Every instinct in her screamed to run, but every thread of her magic strained forward as though the world outside held the answer to a question she hadn't meant to ask.
Nyra moved one step forward.
Kael's breath hitched, but he didn't release her. "Nyra."
She swallowed hard, eyes fixed on the dark beyond the glass. "It doesn't feel hostile," she whispered. "Just—aware."
"And that's worse." Kael's voice dropped, low and urgent. "Things that are aware… want."
The last word struck something deep.
Because that was exactly what she felt through the crackling tension:
a wanting.
Not desire in any mortal sense.
But a claim. A tether. A recognition that chilled her blood.
Nyra tore her gaze from the window and met Kael's eyes.
He looked at her as if she were already slipping away.
Her voice softened. "I'm not leaving."
He exhaled shakily, relief flickering through the bond—weak, unsteady, but real. He leaned heavily on her, his forehead nearly touching hers.
"Then stay where I can reach you," he said.
The cold pulsed again.
Nyra straightened, one hand still gripping Kael's arm, the other pressing against the wooden edge of the window frame for balance. Her flame surged in response to the presence—painfully, brilliantly—casting faint glimmers beneath her skin.
For the first time, she let herself focus on it.
Really focus.
And she felt it.
A gaze.
Ancient. Endless.
Stretching over the land, searching, hungry, patient.
Not for destruction.
Not for chaos.
For her.
Nyra's heart slammed against her ribs.
Kael whispered her name sharply, feeling the spike of her panic through the bond.
But she couldn't look away.
Because in that moment—
just for a breath—
she sensed something horrifyingly clear.
This thing outside the keep, this watcher in the dark,
did not fear her fire.
It recognized it.
And worse—
It believed it belonged to him.