The stars flickered cold and watchful above the valley, veiled in smoke rising from distant battle pyres. The village of Hollowroot lay quiet behind him, still tending wounds from the Karus raid, but Jackie walked alone—silent, barefoot, and marked in ash—to the old firepit beyond the western ridge.
Wind whispered through the scrub pines, scattering charcoal dust and the scent of singed moss. The firepit, ringed in stones etched with old glyphs, yawned before him like a waiting mouth. Here, beneath the gaze of the Ancients and far from the hearths of his kin, Jackie would face the rite Rahu had warned him about—the inner trial, the soul's forge.
He knelt and laid his spear beside him. Then he drew out the Heartstone.
It pulsed warm in his palm—its veins of emberlight had grown brighter since the last battle. Since the moment he had stood between Yara and the blade, calling on strength deeper than blood or bone.
Now, he would test what lived inside him.
Jackie whispered the invocation Rahu had taught:
"Old fire, speak my name. Burn the false. Awaken the true."
With flint and tinder, he sparked the fire. The dry branches caught quickly. Firelight played along the glyph-stones. Jackie sat cross-legged, holding the Heartstone over the flame. Smoke curled up like a snake.
His chest burned—not with heat, but with memory. His father's chants during the solstice dances. The sound of wolves howling across a snowbound ridge. The wind-torn face of his mother, bloodied in a raid. Everything layered within him, singing now.
Then the pain hit.
Like claws raking down his ribs, it burst through his sternum in waves. Jackie gasped, nearly dropping the Heartstone. The flames surged higher, unnaturally tall, crackling in patterns like runes.
He staggered back, coughing. Smoke flooded his lungs. His vision swam. But he did not run.
He remembered Rahu's words: The fire will test if you burn from within—or merely from without.
He sank to his knees again and pressed the Heartstone to his bare chest.
Something ignited.
A howl—not from his lips, but deep within—shook his bones. His vision turned gold and red. Blood surged through his limbs, seething with energy. And in the burning haze, he saw something: a wolf with fur of flame, standing in the firelight, gazing at him with eyes like suns.
It did not speak. It simply waited.
"I'm not afraid," Jackie said, voice hoarse.
The wolf stepped forward and vanished into him.
His body convulsed. Flame exploded from the pit, a column of heat roaring into the night sky. Jackie screamed—but the sound turned into a wolf-howl, echoed by a hundred phantom voices.
He rose, stumbling, barely conscious. His hands were ablaze—but not burning. His veins glowed with streaks of amber and gold. The Heartstone flared in his grip.
He raised his spear.
"Wolfflame," he whispered.
The flame rushed from the spear's tip, arching skyward. It danced like a living thing, shaped like a leaping wolf, its jaws parting with ethereal hunger. The glyph-stones pulsed in response, ancient runes blazing for the first time in generations.
And then, as quickly as it rose, the fire collapsed inward, sucked back into his chest. Jackie fell to his knees, breathless, drenched in sweat, skin scorched but whole.
He had done it.
The Wolfflame lived within him now.
Yara found him there, slumped in soot, hours later. The sun had begun to crest the eastern peaks, washing the firepit in pale light.
She touched his shoulder. "You're alive."
Jackie gave a weak nod, eyes cracked open. "Barely."
She helped him to his feet, cradling his weight with care. "You shouldn't have done this alone."
"I had to. It's not just power anymore. Something's… changing in me."
She looked into his face, brushing ash from his brow. "I can see that."
Jackie saw it in her gaze—admiration, but also fear.
Back in Hollowroot, whispers spread quickly. The sky-flame had been seen from the watchposts. Some said the Ancients had returned. Others claimed Jackie had summoned forbidden magic.
Kaden, the rival youth with serpent tattoos, sneered when Jackie passed. "You think burning a few glyph-stones makes you their heir? You're tampering with old fire, mongrel."
Jackie didn't rise to the bait. Not this time.
Rahu pulled him aside near the longhouse. "The Wolfflame answers few. The fact that it answered you means the Heartstone chose well. But beware, Jackie. Fire gives—but it also takes."
Jackie nodded, voice quiet. "I felt something. Like a beast made of my ancestors. Like a memory."
Rahu's eyes gleamed. "That is what you are now. A living memory of the First Flame. And that is what your enemies will fear."
That night, Jackie sat at the edge of the village with Yara. The sky was wide and full of stars. Between them, a small ember fire crackled, kept low so the watchers on the ridge could still listen for danger.
"You saw it," he said at last.
"I did."
He looked down. "Did it change how you see me?"
She turned toward him. "No. But it changed how you see yourself."
They sat in silence for a while, watching sparks rise.
Finally, Yara asked, "What now?"
Jackie touched the Heartstone beneath his tunic. It pulsed gently.
"We dig deeper," he said. "There's more buried in the old glyphs. I think the wolf I saw… wasn't just mine. I think it was part of something older."
She nodded slowly. "Then we'll find it. Together."
But in the southern hills, beyond the range of the watchfires, something stirred.
A single figure stood on a rocky outcrop, cloak tattered, skin tattooed with shifting ink. The firestorm Jackie had raised had not gone unnoticed.
The stranger knelt, placed a black shard of obsidian to the earth, and whispered in a forgotten tongue. The stone glowed faintly, then cracked down the center.
From within, smoke poured—black and cold.
"They've awakened the flame," the figure said, voice like wind through bone. "Now let us see if the heir burns… or breaks."
End of Chapter 29