Chapter 1

Governor Marcus Thorne came to Redwood Creek when the sky was red with unnatural fire.

The Blight, they called it, first the flames, then the choking, spore-filled air that followed.

His fine city clothes were smudged with ash, his face grim.

He stood before the elders of the Stewards, before Elara.

"You are our only hope," Thorne said, his voice raspy.

"The state is dying. Your healing, your ancient ways..."

He looked directly at Elara.

She was young, but the Hearthstone Spirit burned bright within her, a legacy from her mother, and her mother before.

It was a powerful life-essence, granting resilience, and the ability to mend what was broken.

Years ago, Thorne had come to her, near death from an injury no city doctor could fix.

Elara had shared a piece of her own Hearthstone Spirit with him then.

It had saved his life.

He remembered the cost, or so she thought.

"The land, the people," Elara said, her voice steady, "We will do what we can."

She did not remind him of his debt, not then.

The Stewards, reclusive guardians of nature, agreed.

Elara led the efforts, pouring her energy, her Spirit, into the ravaged land.

The fires receded, the air cleared slowly.

The people began to breathe again.

Then came Isabelle Hayes.

Ambitious, with eyes that never seemed to blink, she became Thorne' s new partner, soon his wife.

Elara was pregnant with Thorne' s child, a child carrying its own nascent Hearthstone Spirit.

This new Spirit, like Elara's, needed the sacred Emberbloom flower, found only on their ancestral lands.

Isabelle whispered in Thorne' s ear.

"That child," Isabelle said, her voice like soft poison, "its power... it's not natural. A threat."

Thorne listened.

He had been saved by that power, but now, with Isabelle at his side, he saw it differently.

He ordered the destruction of all Elara' s carefully cultivated Emberblooms.

Soldiers marched onto the Stewards' ancestral lands, claiming them for the state.

Elara, the savior, was now a prisoner.

They took her to a remote, dilapidated cabin owned by the state, far from her people, far from the Emberblooms her unborn child needed.

The betrayal was swift, absolute.